Botwood Basin

[echarters]

That is some low grade. And some narrow. There is a powerful lot of it though, I will admit.

Reminds me of Champion Bear, who was religiously drilling this narrow vein thing near Dryden a few years back. They drove their stock to the several dollar range on the belief of nice, ingenuous shareholders. They were getting like 1 to 3 grams over perhaps 1 or 2 metres. 3 grams was the high grade. Like, maybe we will mine that sort of thing with robot miners and ultra cheap rock breaking without dynamite, someday... but right now it is kinda tough.

I could conceive of mining perhaps .05 or .07 ounces, (+1.72 grams underground if it were 20 feet wide. Perhaps you could robot mine it at 20,000 tons per day, and upgrade the chips with some kind or sensing tech. It would be nice (and lucky) to get 80% recovery. With full-milling it is marginally possible if you get lucky. A mine in Alaska worked at .05 ounces per short ton underground at 50,000 tons per day, using raw ore upgrading.

If the grades were in decrepitated limestone or soft sandstone that needed no blasting, then 1 gram can be mined provided you can make 5000 tons of the stuff per day. Because of the separations apparent here so far, this would be difficult.

In placer, one gram is high grade. You can mine .50 grams, no problem.

EC<:-}