MINING METHOD OF THE WEEK - SIDE STOPING AND BREAST STOPING!!

Side stoping is an extreme of combination stoping in which the working face of the stope is vertical. The face is parallel to the raises just as the face in flat-back stoping is parallel to the levels. Breast stoping refers to the working of a flat orebody, or a flat section of an orebody, just as coal is mined from a flat coal seam. That is, a slice is worked in a horizontal direction. The assumption is that there is no open stope either above or below the slice, or else the method becomes either underhand or overhand stoping. In some cases the benches in underhand or overhand stoping are called breasts, and the method breast stoping, but I believe that is not the usually accepted definition. Breast stoping, in the strict sense, is the only name applicable to the mining of a horizontal slice, such as the sill floor of a large overhand stope, or the slices in the top-slicing method - 911 Metallurgist.