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After many years of experimentation of the use of water at 3,500 bar pressure and above for direct cutting and drilling of coalmine strata, it is now accepted that a more practical application is to use water at lower pressures to improve the performance of conventional rock and coal cutting tools. There has been great success in rock heading with water assisted light duty roadheaders cutting rocks with compressive strength as high as 140 MPa. Limitations on their use due to excess water will be overcome by phasing systems which will also allow the technique to be extended to the coalface where the NCB is currently carrying out experimentation. In this latter case the objective is to reduce the amount of fines produced by shearer drums in order to meet the industrial market.