I have recently been working on a project exploring how I can use the laser surveying tool that I'm developing to produce high resolution surveys and 3D scans of abandoned mines and caves.

With the support of an innovation grant from the Deep Digital Cornwall project, run by the experts at the Camborne School of Mines and the University of Exeter, I have been able to accelerate the development of my surveying tool and obtain some more advanced hardware for collecting high resolution LiDAR scans at survey stations.

Whilst the surveys of the mines will take a significant amount of time to draw up, the first 3D scans are now processed and ready for viewing. I was very lucky to be invited to view these models using DDC's Visualisation Suite, which gives an incredible virtual reality view of these environments, which otherwise require considerable ropework and mine exploration skills to experience.

I will also make these models publicly available so that you can explore them at home.

• Stacked Deads

  This scale model shows a level in Wheal Pell, an abandoned mine in the St Agnes Consols Sett in West Cornwall. Waste rock (“deads”) are stacked up against one wall.

• Barrow in Passage

  This scale model shows a level in Wheal Pell, an abandoned mine in the St Agnes Consols Sett in West Cornwall. A wooden wheel-barrow lies abandoned on the floor next to a winze (an internal shaft between levels).

• Kibble in Passage

  This scale model shows a level in Wheal Pell, an abandoned mine in the St Agnes Consols Sett in West Cornwall. An ore kibble, a metal bucket used to haul ore up shafts, lies rusting and abandoned in the passage.