Stoping
mining process leaving behind an open space known as a stope
Stoping is the process of extracting the desired ore or other mineral from an underground mine, leaving behind an open space known as a stope. Stoping is used when the country rock is sufficiently strong not to collapse into the stope, although in most cases artificial support is also provided.
The earliest forms of stoping were conducted with hand tools or by fire-setting; later gunpowder was introduced. From the 19th century onward, various other explosives, power-tools, and machines came into use. As mining progresses the stope is often backfilled with tailings, or when needed for strength, a mixture of tailings and cement. In old mines, stopes frequently collapse at a later time, leaving craters or flashes at the surface. They are an unexpected danger when records of underground mining have been lost with the passage of time.
Stoping is considered "productive work", and is contrasted with "deadwork", the work required merely to access the mineral deposit, such as sinking shafts and winzes, carving adits, tunnels, and levels, and establishing ventilation and transportation.
Overview
A stope can be created in a variety of ways. The specific method of stoping depends on a number of considerations, both technical and economical, based largely on the geology of the ore body being mined.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Stoping” as mining process leaving behind an open space known as a stope. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 2, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q1419614. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stoping” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.