A box cut is a small open cut created to provide a secure and safe portal as access to a decline to an underground mine. Generally the box cut is sunk until sufficiently unweathered rock is found to permit the development of the decline. The portal is generally made safe with rock bolts, wire mesh, and shotcrete, which prevents accidental rock falls from closing access to the decline.
Famous quotes containing the words box and/or cut:
“[Let] the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into paradise.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if the town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)