STOCKWATCHKen MacNeill and George Read's Shore Gold Inc. (SGF) jumped 3.5 cents to 24 cents on 116,000 shares. Shore has had a tough time since it hit a high of $8.75 in 2007, but Mr. MacNeill, CEO, and Mr. Read, his ebullient senior vice-president, are inveterate optimists. They say Shore expects its current capital resources, $3.6-million on March 31, will be enough while it completes the environmental permitting process at its Star-Orion South project in central Saskatchewan and attempts to secure project financing. That seems a stretch, unless the company is closing in on a $2-billion financing, because Shore churns through over $2-million a year just on administration. The company has cut back significantly on exploration. It spent hundreds of millions through the mid-2000s at Star and the adjoining joint venture property that hosts Orion South. In 2012 it spent just $4.4-million on exploration and only $2.5-million in 2013. Shore spent just $391,000 on exploration during the first quarter of 2014, less than half the amount from a year earlier. Undaunted, Mr. Read has found a new, cheaper pastime than drilling to occupy his time on the Fort a la Corne diamond hunt: calibration. He says Shore "aims to undertake" additional microdiamond studies of Orion South that could "provide robust calibration methods" to expand the company's calculated "target for further exploration," a regulator-approved term for rock that is not yet a resource. Mr. Read recently postulated that Shore had up to 90 million carats in roughly one billion tonnes of rock beyond the Star-Orion South resource. Now, he hopes to calibrate a promotable grade for another 405 million to 484 million tonnes of rock, adding to his target for further exploration. Unfortunately, all those targets seem destined to go unexplored until Shore raises more cash.