@FireflyOne It shows how hard it is to hit a SW plunging ore...

@FireflyOne It shows how hard it is to hit a SW plunging ore body that is a pipe-like shape when you are looking for a linear shear plane hosting mineralisation dipping SE. They got so close and actually hit the shoot in ND10, 20m @ 2.4% Cu from 111m (or 12m @ 3.27% Cu with [email protected]% Cu surrounding it depending how you want to show it) and ND13, 9m @ 2.35% Cu from 157m. The strangest thing is that they didn't drill near these two early holes. The additional holes were further SE to try to locate the presumed SE dipping mineralised shear zone. Holes NDD 028 and NDD 029 hit narrow high grade zones that we now know are the tail of the mineralised shoot in the SE direction, akin to the new CNB intersection in NLRC032 (8m@1% Cu) in section X4-X4s, although maybe a bit further from the core of the shoot and hence slightly narrower. If they had just drilled another line of holes to the SW of ND10 & ND13 (which were close together) they would have hit the shoot and perhaps understood the geometry and this would have been mined years ago.

They concluded that "These results have negated the concept of the presence of a substantial body of high-grade copper-gold mineralisation, hosted in the NE trending fault zone beneath the Western Workings." With results such as 60m @ 1% Cu, 87m @ 0.9% Cu incl. 30m @ 1.8% Cu, 50m @ 1.1% Cu, 61m @ 0.8% Cu , 52m @ 1.0% Cu and now 15m @ 1.0% Cu from 10m depth it is clear that there is a substantial body of medium to high-grade copper-gold mineralisation in the NE trending fault zone beneath the Western Workings at Nil Desperandum. It commences at surface and continues to plunge to the SW as far as has been drilled. It will be great to see what the IP anomaly NLIP4 reveals when drilling gets to 500m depth. The IP anomaly NLIP4 is at deeper levels further down plunge to the southwest. This could be an increase in mineralisation grade or thickness or simply iron mineralisation associated with the IOCG deposit. We won't know for sure until we drill the deeper holes down plunge to the southwest.

The depth, grade, thickness and continuity of grade and thickness are consistent with an ore body that will be a mine. It isn't Mt. Isa but it should make a nice profitable copper mine. Given the thickness this could easily be an open pit mining higher grade zones and the lower grade halo followed by underground workings on the high grade shoots only.

If you notice the historical drill intersection at the Central Workings of [email protected]% Cu and 0.8 g/t Au then compare to the plan from CNB which shows surface Cu soil anomalies it is not hard to imagine that the drill hole only intersected the SW zone and may not have penetrated the entire zone. My previous post showing several parallel fault zones trending NW indicates that they may have hit one of these which is parallel, but SW of, the main mineralised zone of the Central Workings. The old drilling apparently surprised Syndicated Metals because the ore zone was much shallower then they predicted. Based upon the 75 degree dip recorded in the workings the drill intercept was too early and they decided this meant the dip was actually 45 degrees from the workings to the drill intercept (ignoring their own measurements from the workings). The CNB Niton XRF results shown in the plan below indicates what may have happened. The drill intercept has hit the extension of the mineralised zone from the Lady Maria workings (which Syndicated records as having a production grade over 5% Cu). It has stopped short of the Central Workings mineralised zone. Therefore extending drilling in the area might give a much broader mineralised zone (two parallel zones really). We might do well to consider a plunging shoot as well as a dipping shear plane when locating holes.

Texins Development (1969-72) also concluded that the "copper anomalies are narrow, discontinuous along strike and are not strong at depth. The primarily secondary mineralisation was confined to narrow shear and fracture zones and too small to be of economic interest to a large company." CNB have defined a strong primary sulphide mineralised shoot, of 40m true thickness, that is continuous along strike and down plunge to the current drilled depth of around 300m. It may well be too small to interest BHP. BHP (1973-75) also made similar conclusions including that the mineralisation was primarily in small structurally controlled veins. CNB does not have a small structurally controlled vein although structural control on sulphide mineralisation emplacement was probably very strong.

I'm excited even if the market isn't reflecting it in the share price. Wait till a JORC comes out (next year?) and see if the market ignores that too.