Intersects 11% Zinc, 8.74% Lead And 19.6 g/t Silver Over 8.2 m At Tom West
Fireweed Zinc Ltd (TSXV: FWZ) has obtained positive final results from the 2020 drilling at the Macmillan Pass Project in Yukon, Canada.
The results are from the Reverse Circulation (RC) drill programme at the Tom and Jason deposits.
Highlights
- Hole TRC20-003 intersected 8.2 m true thickness of 11.00% zinc, 8.74% lead, and 19.6 g/t silver in an infill hole at Tom West
- Hole TRC20-007 intersected 8.1 m true thickness of 5.92% zinc, 0.25% lead, and 1.7 g/t silver in a step-out hole at Tom North.
- Hole TRC20-002 intersected 10.6 m true thickness of 9.43% zinc, 5.36% lead, and 36.4 g/t silver in a twin of hole TS020, an historic diamond hole drilled at Tom West in 1952.
CEO, Brandon Macdonald, said lead and silver grades in RC twin holes are significantly higher than historic small-diameter diamond drill holes.
“Improvements in grade with modern drilling methods have been seen in 2018 at Tom West, in 2019 at Tom North and again here in 2020, showing significant grade upside potential for infill drilling,” Mr Macdonald, said.
“The RC programme tested areas with some of the most challenging drilling conditions on the property and yet still delivered excellent results at a lower cost than diamond drilling.
“We see potential to use RC drilling during infill drill programs to reduce the cost of upgrading mineral resources at shallow depths, particularly at Boundary Zone where mineralisation occurs at surface and is hosted by much more competent rocks where drilling conditions are much more favourable.
“The successful step-out hole shows that the project continues to grow at Tom as we advance new discoveries at Boundary Zone.”
The programme was designed to test the potential of RC drilling as a lower cost alternative to diamond drilling for upgrading mineral resources at shallow depths. In 2020, a small number of RC test holes were drilled as infill and twin holes at the Tom and Jason deposits. A step-out hole was also drilled at Tom North.
The 2020 RC infill drilling at Tom West was located in the high-grade, feeder-proximal part of the deposit where the current Mineral Resource is supported by small-diameter historic AX (30.1 mm diameter) or EX (20.6 mm diameter) diamond drill core.
Hole TRC20-002 was an RC twin of an historic EX diamond drill hole, TS020. Zinc grades are very similar but lead and silver grades are significantly higher in TRC20-002 compared to historic hole TS020.
Elsewhere at Tom West and at Tom North, similar patterns have been observed where modern drilling methods show significantly higher grades and thicknesses than nearby historic small-diameter core diamond holes due to better recoveries with modern drilling methods.
Other successful 2020 Tom West infill RC holes intersected consistent high zinc, lead and silver grades shown in Table 1.
The Tom North exploration target was defined by drilling by Fireweed in 2019 but is not yet classified as a Mineral Resource. Hole TRC20-007 was a modest step-out in the down-dip direction at Tom North, 50 m away from the previously drilled mineralised intercept in hole TS19-001 and is within 80m from surface.
Hole JRC20-002 was drilled as an RC infill hole in the Jason Main deposit. Mineralisation was intercepted from 44.20 m to the end of hole at 59.44m. The hole was abandoned in mineralisation due to drilling difficulties, intersecting approximately two-thirds of the mineralised zone.
