The Mantle is much deeper than 2000' down. Depends where on the face of the earth you are what the depth of the Mantle is. The Moe Hole project was an attempt to reach the Mantle by drilling, came up many miles short.
Sulfur is a common constituent in most PGM deposits. The microcluster deposits, and I might ask you to review the paper by Lindsey and Tredeau from Johanesburg, S.A. as given to the Anglo American geologists gathered in Chile, are found in sulfur deficient events. The sulfur types of mineralization found with some of these cluster deposits is by later introduction, millions of years after the PGMs and their hosts were in place. The sulfur may actually have simplified the chemistry in some of these deposits. This phenomonon is becoming widely accepted by the long hair geo scientists.
NAXOS is in a state of reform. They tried to prove that their Franklyn Lake deposit was in fact a 3% dry lake bed near Death Valley Junction. They made iron / aluminuma precipitates that they tried to convince investors was PGM precipitates. No traces of PGMs could be found in the precipitates. I understand the gold that was distributed to investors may have bee the product of salting.
Now the sad side of the project at Franklyn Lake. There really is gold there. The samples run about .02 to maybe as much as 1 OPT gold. Maybe significant areas will run as much as .12 opt gold. Who knows, they seem to be convinced that if they wish hard enough, the ore will get richer.
The basin that contains the Franklyn Lake sediments is flooded with hydrothermal waters rich in sulfur, arsenic and traces of precious metals. The water table is just below the surface of the sediments. Many of the borax mines of that area are adjacent to the Naxos holdings. Small silver mines were once attempted in the area that is now considered a part of the Naxos holdings. I think that the Naxos property if properly managed will be a future gold producer with some palladium as a byproduct. Its all guessing on my part because, no one today seems to want to bite the bullet and make a mine out of what they have. Seems they would rather mine what they wish thay had. At least thats my opinion.
The approach to Franklyn Lake has been to try the black box approaches. Secrecy doesn't work with mining professionals. It only works for stock promotion. One method they attempted was so deadly when used, you could get very sick just by touching the chemicals. I did some due diligence work there. I wasn't against the project, I was against the secrecy and the lack of proof of anything, their poor use of funds and other reasons. However, by using conventional assays designed for arsenous ores, I did find common gold and silver there. Without a good drilling program followed by good custom assays, who knows the value of Franklyn Lake. I believe a few of the better labs like Ledoux have confirmed gold there, but not the type of values that fit deposits that dreams are made of. My information is more than a year or so old, I have not followed the progress there lately.
Franklyn Lake can get accepted when they quit trying to impress the world and try to develop a mine. They have enough information to know that there is gold in those desert dirts. They can't prove how much. After the fiasco in Indonesia, I would suggest that they begin by starting some simple lab scale metallurgical extractions with assay control. If the assays don't balance, work out the difficulties with good accepted problem solving methods. Once the assays are in balance you can start process development. In the beginning, it makes no difference what the recovery is. It is only important that the tail and the recoveries are subtracted from the head and the number approaches a reasonable balance. By keeping good notes and then having a major lab like Ledoux verify the assays by the developed method, every mining company in the country will understand the implications and be willing to seriously look at the project providing the values still look commercial and the ecological considerations don't scare them off.
Agricola back in the 15th century knew this much.
There was a volcano in Idaho, the Moonstone eruption. It had a 5 mile wide blow hole. It totally blew out the sulfur portion of the magma chamber into the atmosphere. The ash from the blast was 15 feet thick 1000 miles east of the volcano. At the time there were hippos, elephants, horses, cows, camels and other animals on the North American continent. After the blast, all of these creatures were extinct in North America. The end was fast. That volcano vented microcluster precious metals values as well as scattered uranium anomalous sediments all over North America. Now that was a microcluster event. Copper, gold, silver and who knows what else? I am not making any economic assertions for the situation there, but just saying that some volcanoes were sulfur deficient after first blowing their top off. Lucky for us no volcano like this has erupted since man has appeared on the face of the earth.
Well, thats it for tonight. Mike |
