RE: RE: Oh dear , oh dear oh dear AV, OK I'll concede that your suggestion might have some relevance, but lets try to put it into perspective..
Of course your comment about actual mining activity does not affect my calculations related to average daily thruput the mill. Would you concede that regardless of what the miners do , it will require some sort of major improvement in the mill operations department before daily thruput improves beyond 55 tpd??
The press release put out by management on Dec 14th 2011 stated that the BK3 zone was first intersected on Nov 30th 2011. Todays press release states that 236 feet of development has since been completed on this zone. Lets assume a 15 day mine / mill shutdown over xmas, and we have 236 feet of advance over six weeks , or a daily advance of 5.62 feet per day. This is only 50% or less of what I would expect from good competant crews......... somewhere between 11 and 13 feet per day ( two rounds).
Now giving you the benefit of the doubt , lets say your figure of 6 miners is accurate, and lets assume only 4 are on site at any one time. This is an advance rate of 1.41 feet per manshift. This is only 33% of what I would have thought reasonable expectation. Of course if six men are on site at all times , these productivities become worse.
Assuming the drifting on ore was done at 5 feet x 7 feet, the reported 236 feet corresponds to 826 tons or 826 / 42 x 4 or 4.92 tons per manshift..........somewhat less than the 15 tons per manshift I would have expected.
Now if we are going to speculate as to what the mill heads are going to be over the next few months lets assume that the mill is fed from the mill stockpile alone. That makes the mill heads 0.44 ounces per ton for at least 72 days. If this feed is supplemented with the high grade that this press release .. and your suggestion alludes to, then the most relevant number in todays release is . " average cut grade is 0.788 ounces per ton over 2.2 feet" Dilute this value to 5 feet ( I dont know many miners who can work in a heading 2.2 feet wide, do you ???) we have an anticipated stope grade of 0.35 ounces per ton.
So if all goes as well as you suggest , we can expect a press release sometime in April or May stating mill heads over the last two- three months were in the 0.4 ounce range. Time will tell but right know Im sceptical.
And the unfortunate reality, is that stope development ( in Waste) is a fact of life and if you are right that all recent efforts have been in development . rather than stoping , all this means is a lack of forward planning. The benefit of my previous analysis is that it include all the abnormal positive and negative daily occurrences. tDrifting must continue to support stoping.
So we need the mill guys to improve their productivity by almost 100% and the miners to improve theirs by somewhere between 200 and 300%. I stand by my previous statement , unless something dramatic happens to improve things........ we can expect more of the same as over the last 10 months