Mining Randomly..
- Thread starter Redmiller
- Start date
You said bronze, which doesn't exist in 7DTD.
Yeah, true enough. House radiators used to be cast iron, I don't know what they make them out of now. Car radiators used to be made out of copper and brass, but have been mostly aluminum for a long time. Although you could argue the 7DTD apocalypse didn't happen in the present since the level of tech seems behind.Hehe, yeh. Also most radiators aren't made of brass either. Realism is a pain in the bottom.
Jost Amman
Hunter
Oh, ■■■■! I thought of one thing and wrote something else!
But the concept I wanted to express is similar. You don't mine metal alloys, you mine ore.
zztong
Hunter
You could but the calendars in game show a future year. I forget which. Is it 2034? I would argue most cars don't have radiators anymore and that we should be building stills to make alcohol to fuel generators, plus making small wind turbines, and salvaging solar cells from solar farms.
We'd exhaust the brass casings and guns would eventually be muzzleloaders unless some part of the world remains civilized such that modern manufacturing still exists. As a bonus, that would explain why the vending machines can be restocked.
Except as I also pointed out, naturally occurring brass is a thing, which means you can mine it...Oh, ■■■■! I thought of one thing and wrote something else!
But the concept I wanted to express is similar. You don't mine metal alloys, you mine ore.
Reloading is a thing. Granted at some point the metal is going to become too stressed to reload.You could but the calendars in game show a future year. I forget which. Is it 2034? I would argue most cars don't have radiators anymore and that we should be building stills to make alcohol to fuel generators, plus making small wind turbines, and salvaging solar cells from solar farms.
We'd exhaust the brass casings and guns would eventually be muzzleloaders unless some part of the world remains civilized such that modern manufacturing still exists. As a bonus, that would explain why the vending machines can be restocked.
zztong
Hunter
Agreed.
But when it comes to smelting and recasting brass into a casing, I personally, in real life, would need either an instructor or a whole bunch of how-to books and videos, and probably a bunch of salvaged tools, to get anywhere. Casings are molded, are they? I can't imaging a survivor making sheet brass, stamping out squares, and rolling them.
I feel I could, perhaps, stand a decent chance at smelting fishing weights into a lead ball if I had found the appropriate mold. Now if you want me to mine that lead and smelt it from stone and other impurities, then I'm doomed again without somebody to either show me, or a resource with lots of pictures and descriptions.
Well considering we are making guns, vehicles and power tools...I don't think reloading is a far stretch.
It really is fairly easy (one should exercise proper caution and safety of course) and reloading setups are pretty common around the USA, at least in The South. Especially with the price of ammo these days.
I don't know about making casings, they do need to be fairly precise.
I'm not real sure about manufacturing primers either, as they are so cheap it isn't worth doing (unless society collapsed).
zztong
Hunter
Right. I'm aware of reloading. A friend of mine used to do it decades ago, bullets and shot gun shells. He bought casings, bullets, primers, and gunpowder, and had a press. He did it mostly to save money and experimented a little.
What we do in game and what I think is realistically possible are quite different things and it depends on how long after the apocalypse we're talking. Towards realism, if we have cars after a year I doubt they're running on gasoline. A diesel running on alcohol of some sort would make more sense, or perhaps an electric. I don't see anyone operating a refinery and gasoline goes bad. Power tools maybe off of a battery. We wouldn't be getting electricity from the grid. -- All that said, if there's functional civilization somewhere, then I'd rethink all of that.
But if we're just talking about the game, then unskilled and untrained labor making new brass bullet casings on a forge based on what they read in some magazines or from their experiences crafting stone axes. Sure. Why not?
Fair enough you did mention IRL, although given the context of the discussion I don't know why.Right. I'm aware of reloading. A friend of mine used to do it decades ago, bullets and shot gun shells. He bought casings, bullets, primers, and gunpowder, and had a press. He did it mostly to save money and experimented a little.
What we do in game and what I think is realistically possible are quite different things and it depends on how long after the apocalypse we're talking. Towards realism, if we have cars after a year I doubt they're running on gasoline. A diesel running on alcohol of some sort would make more sense, or perhaps an electric. I don't see anyone operating a refinery and gasoline goes bad. Power tools maybe off of a battery. We wouldn't be getting electricity from the grid. -- All that said, if there's functional civilization somewhere, then I'd rethink all of that.
But if we're just talking about the game, then unskilled and untrained labor making new brass bullet casings on a forge based on what they read in some magazines or from their experiences crafting stone axes. Sure. Why not?
My reply was mixed as well, first para I was talking about IG and 2nd out of. It really is pretty simple, a kid could do it. Instructions are like 1 sheet, I'm you could figure it out in a hurry if you needed to, like if your life depended on it.
Still, I imagine guns would eventually give way to simpler weapons, for hunting, I'd take a bow or crossbow over a black powder any day. If zombies were a thing, the silence would probably be preferable as well. Granted as a friend of mine pointed out, you really don't need anything bigger than a .22 to blow through a rotting head.
WarMongerian
Refugee
What kind of mining are you doing? I tunnel extensively, looking to get all the stone I need to make concrete, and the ore that I come across is just an extra.
My Ore mining is done from the surface down, and usually I get more than enough by the time I work my way down to bedrock, and then just climb back up the ladder to wherever the Ore is located, but I don't touch any of it beyond the 2 X 2 X 2 deposit beneath the top node near the surface, as I want some space between me and the screamers, so I'll dig down to bedrock (elevation 3), and then place a balsa wood ladder from there back to the surface. Usually, about 6 blocks deeper down than the initial deposit.
Recently, in v2.1, I have taken to building at least a 4 X 4 X 3 block house around the mine's 2 X 2 footprint, rather than the complete mining tower I had been building. It's faster, and although it isn't as safe as building a full 9 X 9 X 7 mining tower, (complete with whatever workstations I want/need), with just a 1x1 mine down 6-10 blocks deep, before I start branching out, it does allow me all the Ore I need, and I need a whole lot.
Morloc
Arch Necromancer
I'm struggling to understand...you dig a shaft to bedrock, and then climb back up to around 6 blocks deep and fan out and down from there?
What I'm seeing (or imagining) now is that the ore doesn't go as deep, or spread as wide. At some point between the surface and bedrock it just gives up. I have not tested digging say, 10 more blocks down to see if it starts up again admittedly.
I generally mine large quantities of ore (at least a dozen stacks of 6,000) and plenty of byproduct stone/sand/soil.
What I'm seeing (or imagining) now is that the ore doesn't go as deep, or spread as wide. At some point between the surface and bedrock it just gives up. I have not tested digging say, 10 more blocks down to see if it starts up again admittedly.
I generally mine large quantities of ore (at least a dozen stacks of 6,000) and plenty of byproduct stone/sand/soil.
Riamus
Hunter
I mine where the ore is. I'll dig down until I see it start branching out and then I'll follow the branches. The only time I go further down is if my branches run dry or if it starts branching too close to the surface that I'm concerned about everything falling down. By the time I'm done, the mine can run hundreds of meters in all directions with a dozen or more tunnels that are not all level. It makes it very difficult for zombies to surprise me because they'll struggle to find their way to me and that causes them to make more noise. I don't much care for the straight shaft mines that some people do. I don't need anywhere near that much stone, so it's just a waste of time to do that for me. I can get the ore that I am trying to mine far faster if I'm only mining ore and not touching the stone except if I need to in order to walk through an area.
I will probably surprise you greatly. But in the real world, only gold and silver can be mined in pure form. Everything else is chemical compounds. Iron, for example, is usually mined as an oxide or hydroxide. To obtain iron from this, the ore is smelted together with coal in a blast furnace, where coal acts as a reducing agent for the metal.
Lead shot is not made in a mold. There are 2 ways to obtain it:
1 - drops of lead fall on an inclined chute and solidify as they roll down it.
2 - drops of lead are left in free pouring for a sufficiently long time to solidify.
Usually I find an exit to the surface of the needed ore and start digging there. When the vein starts to go to the side, I just remove it layer by layer. As a rule, all the clay from above falls on me and the mine turns into a quarry. Having completely dug out the vein, I either look for the next one or forget about mining this ore until the end of the game.
At the beginning of the game, when I need stone and clay, but do not really need ore, I usually delete some hill nearby.
Jost Amman
Hunter
Hmm... as far as I know, no, you can't find it naturally. That's why it's called an alloy.
Jost Amman
Hunter
No, you don't surprise me, I already know that.
But you're talking about removing the so called "impurities", while Krougal is saying the brass (as an alloy) is found in the ground, which is false.
Also, you're not completely correct in what you said, read this as an example.
He is not so wrong, although it is a rather rare compound in nature. Read about tin, it can be mixed with copper and antimony in deposits. For example, at the Dubrovskoye deposit (Russia, Primorye) tin is a by-product of copper mining. And that's where you might find inclusions of bronze and brass.
zztong
Hunter
Oddly enough, it was in a magazine that I read this. It was relevant 30 years ago.Aww crap, I knew I should have read the magazine.