Southern Silver Exploration (SSV.V) is currently working on its ongoing 12,000 meter drill program, and the assay results from three holes that have just been released (the assay results of a fourth hole are still pending)
confirm the mineralization appears to be extending outside of the currently known zones. The intervals are relatively short, but hole 112 is of specific interest as it intersected two zones of what appears to be viable mineralization.
A first interval started 387.5 meters downhole and assayed 1.91 g/t silver, 0.9% copper and 13.1% ZnPb with traces of gold (0.04 g/t) over 3.4 meters (true width: 2.8 meters) for a silver-equivalent grade of 747 g/t (and a zinc-equivalent grade of 21.1%). Within this 2.8 meters, there’s a narrower higher grade zone of 1 meter true width with a silver-equivalent grade of in excess of 1,100 g/t silver, fueled by a 21.8% ZnPb intercept.
And just 25 meters below the initial interval, Southern Silver’s drill bit intersected an additional 2.8 meters (2.3 meters true width) at a silver-equivalent grade of 179 g/t. That’s a bit on the lower end of the spectrum for an underground silver mine, but it is a very nice addition to the high-grade zone that just above this interval.
Hole 113 also returned economic-grade rock, but it looks like SSV still has some additional work to do to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together as some of those intervals are rather narrow. The same remark could be made for hole 111: the grades are absolutely excellent, now it’s up to Southern Silver to establish true widths in some zones and to see what’s mineable. That’s an issue that will have to be tackled later, when SSV moves to a PEA stage, but for now the main takeaway seems to be SSV’s successful attempts to figure out if the 400 by 200 meter extension of the North Skarn zone is also carrying grade. Now Southern Silver has a better understanding of this extension, the focus of the drill program will now return to the ‘main’ Skarn zone where Southern Silver and its joint venture partner will drill a few holes to offset some of the higher grade holes drilled in 2015 and 2016.
Southern Silver will also gain more insight in the resource by doing some infill drilling to determine the accuracy and perhaps increase the size of the resource estimate.
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