Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayne Whalen who wrote (67772)	10/29/2009 6:31:07 PM
From: russet	20 Recommendations Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 78403

Hank gave you an piece of data about past drilling down dip you should think about. Imagine a 4 foot by 8 foot piece of 1 inch plywood representing a flat vein of pure gold in the ground. Most geologists would drill 90 degrees to the face of the sheet and get an intersection of 1 inch of gold called the true width. They would then drill holes a regular spaces through the 1 inch board until they failed to hit and use the data from all the holes to estimate the dimensions of the board like vein. Now imagine if Frank Callaghan decided to drill down the width and/or length of the board instead and generated several intersections of between 4 feet and nearly 9 feet of gold making the body of gold look much bigger in three dimensions than the flat sheet it really is. So what is Frank Callaghan really doing, and what are the true widths of his vein intersections?

To: Wayne Whalen who wrote (67772)	10/30/2009 11:53:20 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78403

There is a thing about drilling in mountains. I ran into the same thing in Chibougamau. The veins often dip into the mountain. If they dipped the other way often, then they would dip out down the valley and you would be limited in tonnage down dip unless the veins were stacked, imbricated or en echelon tension fractures,, but presumably not up dip. To drill an in-hill-dipping vein you have to go down the mountain and drill flat, or drill slightly or majorly down dip. Otherwise you have to go waaaay up the mt. and drill vertical. Even then you could be into expansion of intersections of misses. All of this could cause the strata to do a wavey tell-tale in the wind in line with the core , like a snake up the core, and the intersection to widen waaaaaay out, until it sounds unreal. This has happened in a lot of areas. Sometimes you cannot help it. Sometimes you can. Look at the core. If the foliations* (multitudinous parallel separations in the rock, more or less in line with the veins and beds or at a low angle to them.) and veins are in line with the core or snake back and forth like a garter snake on a radiator, then you have your down dip hole. The foliations should "nickel up", or look like poker chips in toilet roll if the drilling is right. the veins should cross the core axis at 90 degrees or perhaps 45 (even as far as thirty). Every once in a while you may see a wavy vein in line with the core. It could be down dip in that region and then change later. The foliations in a down dip core are very long, making wedges on the order of several inches long, or much longer than the core is wide. This is your major clue. The veins always seem wavy or their length is monstrous, several feet in the core, with the small veins you see both edges parallel to the core. In the mountains you get so many folds this way and that, that strata can go in line with you from box to box, You never know when you are cross section and vertical. For this reason mountain drilling should use oriented core devices to mark how the core sits in the drill string. * You get some geos talking about fissile rock. They pretend that some rock just makes parallel cleaves because of its nature. This raise the question as to what would cause that. If disturbance of the beds and pressure caused the cracks in then rock to be parallel, this is called structure. Structure indicates folding and faulting, and compression of beds. This induces axial planar shear, which is what you see crossing the beds or layers of rock at low angles 90% of the time in folded rocks. How do you know they are folded? Do you see mountains? Do the beds dip near vertical, or beyond 30 degrees? You are at the east or west coast? You are on the edge of a craton? You are looking at an orgeny, (mountain building) or in the Archean or Proterzoic? Do the veins curve, or the beds change direction along strike? Do you see crinkly veins, dilation zones filled with veinlets that are curved, S shaped, or Z? Kink bands? Boudins? Fluting? The beds are folded. End of story. Let's move on to structure 401 and see which way the noses are closing and whether the beds are overturned or upward facing or not. EC<:-}