A vertical, overhand mining method whereby most of the broken ore remains in the stope to form a working floor for the miners. Another reason for leaving the broken ore in the stope is to provide additional wall support until the stope is completed and ready for drawdown. Stopes are mined upward in horizontal slices. Normally, about 35% of the ore derived from the stope cuts (the swell) can be drawn off ("shrunk") as mining progresses. As a consequence, no revenues can be obtained from the ore remaining in the stope until it is finally extracted and processed for its mineral values. The method is labor intensive and cannot be readily mechanized. It is usually applied to orebodies on narrow veins or orebodies where other methods cannot be used or might be impractical or uneconomical. The method can be easily applied to ore zones as narrow as 4 ft (1.2 m), but can also be successfully used in ore widths up to 100 ft (30 m).