Fire AssayThe core is split or sawn in half. Half is returned to the core box for reference purposes. The other half is bagged and sent in for fire assay. Fire assay is a destructive method. The half core which is sent in for fire assay is consumed and destroyed. Only rarely is the entire core sent in for fire assay. A more common approach is to send in 3/4 of the core. Standard practice is to send in half the core. No one screwed up!
Kerf loss is not recovered because it is contaminated.
As a quality control experiment NFG has compared the half of the core originally consumed by ALS Minerals fire asssay to the other half of the core in the core box recently consumed by Eastern Analytical fire assay. ALS Minerals fire assay has been returning values which are scewed to the high side if the Eastern Analytical results are to be believed. Why, has yet to be determined. Which is the more correct has yet to be determined. Previous quality control samples did not identify a problem.
A decision has been made to go to whole core assaying which is NOT standard practice. The market didn't like that too much! Once the current problems with fire assay are resolved the company is considering the Chrysos Photonassay system as a way to do whole core assay in a nondestructive way. This will also get around the bottlenecks in the fire assay industry.
The press release was a little confusing in that it did not define Eastern Analytical's methods. According to the web they are a standard fire assay lab. In an earlier blog I confused them with the new Chrysos Photoassay technique. My apologies.