maybe a better than normal chance of getting visible silver in cores?, page-8

At the risk of getting chewed by Ryrie again I'll post this anyway.

Back in the last drilling campaign this year, ppl were posting about visible silver and suggesting that if it were there the sp would rocket on insider buying. The fact that this didn't happen somehow meant there was none! Well subsequent results showed that this theory was flawed. At the time I posted the content below regarding native silver and the several forms in which it comes.

Another point to make here is that Core [the company] are conducting RC drilling, not diamond core [the drilling] where visible elements can be clearly seen in a core of solid rock. In Reverse circulation the drilling system makes use of a dual-wall pipes where high-pressure air or water is forced down the outer pipe to the drill bit, and is then directed to the centre of the pipe. The air returns the cuttings to the surface via the inner pipe. RC chips are typically stored in plastic bags, each representing 1 m of drilling. With this in mind, read my comments below.

If you want to read more about RC drilling, go here: http://www.atlascopcoexploration.com/1.0.1.0/354/TS5.pdf

Comment re silver in drilling
Native Silver is visible in RC drilling chips, especially in the geological province around Broken Hill, as the Native Ag is very visible due to the nature of the metal native silver in that region.

However, Ag does take on varying colours depending on its composition which in many cases is a compound or electrum, as say Au electrum (Au & Ag)of the Eastern Goldfields region of WA.

Then there are a host of silver minerals which can vary in colour from Blackish to Lead-Grey depending on the compound. An exploratory driller would probably not know of these and therefore would not know what he is drilling, plus drillers never get to see the washed and sieved RC chips as they are being logged. RC chips can vary up to 15mm, and they are the pieces that have been sieved and washed that are stored in the chip box trays and very clean pieces.

Some of those other Ag minerals are Argentite, Stephanite, the Ruby Silver ores, Pyragyrite (black to cochineal-red), Prousite, Freieslebenite, Polybasite, Hessite & Cerargyrite Kerargyrite, Horn Silver.

As you may appreciate, those last named minerals are of chlorides and or the various salts of silver, so they could vary from grey, bluish, sometimes greenish, and when pure, colourless. But it would require an experienced mineralogist using a binocular microscope to define these, and even then a thin section may be required under transmitted light, where the light is passed through the prepared and mounted specimen ground to 30u (micron) from memory, .003.

At the time of this last discussion I suggested that speculation about visible silver, or the absence of the company making an ann re visible silver, was not helpful. Management will ann in a timely and responsible manner. What punters may want to happen and what actually does happen are two different things. I am happy to sit out the entire drilling program and have the assays announced in due course [obviously the pending expiry of options may help with result timing ... one way or the other].

Anyway, back to my box now.