Cave Digging - Technique

Technique

On occasion, a newly discovered opening will be large enough for the average person to enter, but often they are too small and must be enlarged to allow entry. When the entrance is too small, it is enlarged using cave digging techniques.

Sometimes digging simply involves moving a few rocks and some soil. This can be accomplished with the bare hands or may involve the use of folding army shovels, root-pruning saws, small crack hammers, buckets to move the material, and rope to haul the buckets if the opening is being enlarged in a downward direction. Large tamping tools and crowbars are also useful in dislodging the rocks and soil as the digging progresses.

Sometimes, the use of equipment and brute force is not enough to gain entry into the cave. In cases such as these, serious diggers resort to more complicated means of opening the cave. Many "digs" become large group projects, involving backhoes, timber shoring, and even the use of large diameter well drilling methods.

Where the main impedement is solid rock, entry may involve the use of explosive material, similar to those used to remove stumps on farms, or it may involve the practice of rock shaving, where small holes are drilled in the rock and a gunpowder charge is detonated to spall the rock off in thin layers. A similar technique, called plug and feather, involves driving wedges into lines of small diameter holes that have been drilled in the rock. As the wedges are driven into the holes, a crack forms along the line of holes and the rock is eventually broken.

When explosives or "bang" is used, progress can be slow due to the need to not visit the passages for weeks to wait for the bad air to clear.

The most popular and recently developed technique is known as "capping", where a deep hole is drilled into the rock using a battery powered drill, a small explosive charge (possibly designed for use with a nail gun) is inserted, and tapped with a long steel rod in order to cleave off pieces of rock.