Extraction of slate in Brazil
09april
Extraction of slate in Brazil
1. View of the slate quarry
This photo clearly shows one of the quarries for the extraction of gray-black slate. What immediately catches your eye is the structure of the pit terrace. Although all vertical surfaces were created by sawing slate, horizontal surfaces are the natural planes of the cut. This strictly horizontal orientation is unique in this form and makes up the Brazilian slate. Since the slate never moved and did not form in the formation process, it was able to maintain its uniqueness, so it could be processed into high-quality slate products.
If you now look at the upper part of the quarry, you will see huge masses of land that you had to remove in order to reach the main deposits of the stone. In the upper zones of the quarry the shale is of lower quality, and the main extraction of high-quality slate occurs at the bottom, the deeper the slate is mined, the better it is, and correspondingly, more.
Here, in this quarry, gray-black shale is produced with a wide range of shades of gray.