The message whey trying to place a minehole should either be purely informational (and not stopping you from building the minehole) or take gear into account.
i actually think that entire "You can't build that minehole because the game arbitrarily decides your mining power is shit." mechanic is terrible because it is not indicative of your actual mining strength down there and ignores hardness nodes of the rock. i couldn't build my minehole in an area i could mine like a champ, but then I COULD build my minehole in to a super hardness node where I can't even scratch feldspar.