"There are several mineralogical features of tin skarns that should be highlighted. From a mining standpoint, the most important is that tin can be incorporated into silicate minerals, such as garnet, sphene, and idocrase, where it is economically unrecoverable. Dobson (1982) reports garnet containing up to 6% Sn in skarn at Lost River, Alaska. Thus, large deposits such as Moina in Tasmania (Kwak and Askins, 1981), can contain substantial amounts of tin that cannot be recovered with present or foreseeable technology.
Extensive retrograde or greisen alteration of early tin-bearing skarn minerals can liberate this tin and cause it to precipitate in oxide or sulfide ore. Thus, the skarn destructive stages of alteration are particularly important in tin skarn deposits. As noted by Kwak (1987), the most attractive ore bodies occur in the distal portions of large skarn districts where massive sulfide or oxide replacements occur without significant loss of tin in calc-silicate minerals like garnet. "
Comment: Seems like our deposit is one of the good, oxide, ones (well, we wouldn't continue drilling if it weren't ...). Now the only question is: are grades good enough ... (so far the answer seems to be "if we find enough to do large scale mining" ...
YTC Price at posting:
32.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
