Knight, Jerard,
I'm grateful for the links. I read the Hoyt article with great interest. I believe I read it at the time it was posted but could not appreciate it because of my very limited knowledge of this area. The goldbug site, although hard on the eyes, gave me a nice summary of the cyanide and fire assay processes. I decided to put off the Chemex site for now, but will certainly get to it later. Bottom line seems to be that you indeed come up with the precious metal, if it exists, at the end of the fire assay process. That brings me back to Ledoux's reluctance to certify its results now. I'm sure the process involved in getting the ore transfigured to the so-called simple state that makes it susceptible to standard fire assaying is very complicated. It has taken the experts at Ledoux months to learn it and, hopefully, become adept at utilizing it. However, since they are able to get measurable precious metals in hand, I still find it difficult to understand their reluctance to unequivocally affirm this through certification now. I know they have a stellar reputation to guard but when you have the goods in hand, what greater proof does one need? Are they worried about consistency? Are there political forces at work that caused the hesitancy? Was there a concern with some type of contamination? I guess anyone of these factors or maybe others could have caused the (hopefully) temporary hesitance. If consistency was the sole concern, there shouldn't have been a problem in immediately certifying these results and adding that further testing is being done to confirm the consistency of the presence of gold in the samples at issue. In any case, it will be interesting to see how this drama unfolds.
Thanks again,
sh |
