Found this on KXL forumPosted: Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 7:39:02 AM by sanjosie
Spectacular - that's how the surface showings on the Golden Mile are
described. And why not, on the 11.6 meter wide vein a grab sample has
tested 7599 g/t, a mind boggling 220.3 oz/t. The grab sample was next
to a channel cut grading 32.96 g over the full width of the vein. It's
no wonder folks posed for a picture there, truly a fantastic,
spectacular find.
Instinctually I struggle with such numbers. I don't subscribe to
newsletters or rely on others' advice. I study precious metals
explorers. That means I daily read news releases and exploration
updates. Grab samples and channel cuts are early steps in the
exploration process. Overtime I've become jaded about the results
reported for these types of samples. The reason is these usually are
surface samples. On the surface, weathering over time erodes the rock,
but not the metal. As a result the metal grade is concentrated and
won't be representative of the grade of the unweathered mineralization
that may be found at depth.
The Hercules veins are not weathered, or at least much less so. They've
been unearthed. The overburden, the glacial till and soil, have been
stripped away to reveal the veins. As such, the reported grades are
more important, more representative of what lies below.
The next question is what widths and depths will be good for this type
of deposit. Again I have to fight my instincts. The news flow I see
each day is dominated by disseminated gold. These ideally have large
widths where low grades of gold exist. For these types of deposits
width in the drill intersection is everything.
Hercules can't be judged by those standards. Red Lake and Timmins are
the types of deposits that are comparable. Here is a description of the
Red Lake Mine mineralization and widths:
The deposit at the Red Lake mine is made up of a number of
subparallel groups of linear mineralized zones, hosted by sequences of
altered mafic volcanic rocks, which are interpreted to lie along the
north and south limbs of a major antiform. Ultramafic rocks, which are
rarely host to ore, are spatially related and important in acting as
impermeable zones that trapped the gold-rich hydrothermal solutions in
fracture systems.
Ore lenses may vary from a few inches to
several feet in width and may be from tens of feet to more than 100
feet in length. Overlapping lenses have permitted orebodies to be
developed and mined over lengths, in some instances, in excess of 1,000
feet and widths of up to 60 feet.
By the rich, high grade gold vein experience at Red Lake Mine, expect
results on Kodiak's Golden Mile of few inches to several feet in width.
The maximum width could be up to 60 feet, about 20 meters.