shammel

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An obsolete form of shamble.
2. n. Specifically—2. In mining, a stage or shelf-like arrangement of boards, or a plat cut in the rocks, upon which the ore was shoveled by the miner in the ancient method of working a mine, “cast after cast,” as it was called. The shammels were about six feet apart. Also called shamble.
3. In mining, to work a mine by throwing the material excavated on to a shammel (which see) in the “cast after cast” method, which was the usual way before the art of regular mining by means of shafts and leads had been introduced.