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Chockstone Forum - Accidents & Injuries

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The 16-Jan-2009 At 11:57:15 AM BlueyCanyons

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Firstly I must say I am not very experienced in bolting new routes.

But for years I worked as an excavator operator around sydney and have hammered hundreds of tons of sandstone all over the area.

As people I am sure are aware sandstone strenght varies greatly some of it powders very easier (often a yellow or purple colour is very soft) and some is extremely hard ( I often found the hardest has a white and purple tinge to it when broken). But in saying that I could remove sandstone from the same small area and encounter both types hard and soft. Also from looking at it I found it near impossible to judge what time of sandstone is underneath the weathered surface. I think assuming in any case that an area has hard sandstone or soft sandstone is never a smart thing to do. I have encounter sandstone that has a strenght to it that I would never expect an expansion bolt to pull out from and some that I would think twice about trusting any comonly used bolt lenghts or diameters.

Part of my role was also installing rock bolts, the type you often see on the side of free way rock walls. In sandstone the engineers always used the glue in type. The only time I never used the glue in type was up the coast and we had to drill much deeper, form memory nearly 3 times and used a special anchor called a platypus bolt.

I think the main thing this highlight is that people who are not experinced in placing bolts in a region should not do so without previous bolting experince and some advice from locals on what tyoe of bolts they have found are suitable and long lasting