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Gold/Mining/Energy : A New Age In Gold Refining -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lawrence Brierley who wrote (383)	12/31/1997 7:16:00 PM
From: Michael J. Wendell	Respond to of 672

Lawrence, In summary you asked what are the practical depths that can be dredged. Dredging has the limitations of depth based on engineering and deposit quality. Bucket dredges have probably gone to 180 feet or more. Suction dredges which might be applicable here can go to maybe 300 feet. If the values are as you say, from surface down to possibly 500 feet, I would think the last 200 feet are valueless unless some grade would be so rich as to warrant massive pumping of the billions of gallons of water out of the reservoir. The deeper values, in my opinion, have little purpose. I think I would not try to create big numbers to sell stock. I would rather try to show my stockholders I have a plan that will create cash flow. However, A boat might cost $100 million or more. Even when not dealing with bankers, that kind of financing will require a lot of reserve delineation plus a pilot plant of sufficient size to make a prediction of the percentage of commercially recoverable values from the deposit. So, yes, in my opinion the bottom is going to be at how big a boat is purchased. The bigger the sucker or bucket line, the more weight the boat must manage. I wonder what will control the float lake banks from sluffing in. But that is a question for engineers. The kind of engineers that work on dredges in navigatable waterways or on metals dredges are the experts here. "Naxos has obtained precious metal assay results by high temperature fire assay (albeit from non-COC samples) using a prior technique to Johnson/Lett from surface to 150' on two or three holes, and on one deep hole in Feb./96 down to 510'. Even at that depth there was no evidence that values were falling off. The Behre Dolbear COC drilling is supposed to be a series of 15 holes, each to a depth of between 250' and 500'. A further 190 holes are planned." Since you follow my threads, you know that I do not give additional credit to (COC) samples. If the folks running the ship are honest and with good intentions, I wouldn't want them to waste my money on that sort of foolishness. I would instead prefer to have them seeking progress and profits. That point is down the road, but circumvention of goals to satisfy and teach precious metals chemistry classes to assayers that should be paying for the classes is not my idea of an investment goal. I understand a little history though, and therefore make an exception to Naxos in this case. I think it is good they are not doing the drilling themselves. Glad to have you on board as a participant. mike