Tinka Update

I'm going to do a different spin on the post, initially focusing on the results and then look at some areas that have been under-drilled to see where Tinka can go to add some tonnes to and/or improve the quality (category) of their resources.

Summary

• Some good infill holes (A17-085 and 096) in the core of the system
• System is getting weaker to the east (A17-093) and to the SE (A17-094).
• Narrow, albeit high-grade zones drilled to the east of the West Ayawilca resource (A17-083 and 085)
• A few holes were drilled in the Chaucha, Zone 3 and Valley targets, but to date, no significant mineralization was discovered. However, early days.... 

Results

We are now looking at a mature exploration project. Tinka are now drilling the periphery of the South Ayawilca system, so the mineralization is now narrow and deep.

Blue = Sept PR; Red = Oct 2nd PR; yellow = result pending

Here are some sections

Hole A17-087 - SW end of the South Ayawilca Deposit

We can see that mineralization is dying out to the SW.

A17-071 (left) SE extent of mineralization

Mineralization dying out to the NE, but there are a few gaps. Hole A15-041 (to the right) hit multiple zones of moderate zinc mineralization.

The effect that this drilling has had on my officially bad resources is:

Full breakdown of ZnEq resources

We actually see just a slight increase in tonnes, but a decrease in grade. This is due to the slightly lower average grade due to all of the different cut-off limits.

This may sound negative, but essentially Tinka have been drilling at South Ayawilca all year, and have defined a new, deposit at Ayawilca. It will be interesting to see when a new technical report is released.

Opportunities

However, I have a question: Where are Tinka going to drill now? The drilling to date seems to have closed off the South Ayawilca deposit, where are they going to generate future intercepts and grow the resource.

There are 3 areas where they can focus:

1. Infill drilling - designed to increase the confidence of the resource (increase the amount of M&I resources and reduce the amount of Inferred)
2. Expansion - drill around the edges and between known mineralized zones.
3. Green-fields - drilling of new targets

Each of these have a different risk vs reward levels, and I've spent a few days compiling as much of the drilling data as possible from technical reports and old press releases.

They have already started drilling some of the pother regional targets, but unfortunately, so far the results haven't been very positive, but we need to remember that they have only drilled 6-7 holes on them, so it is early days.

So, I will focus on the first two. Where are there: 

• Under-drilled areas
• Where some intercepts haven't been followed up on.

NOTE: there may be reasons certain areas haven't been explored (e.g. access issues, topography, hydrology etc.). I'm going to ignore these in this post as I'm not intimately familiar with the project.  

Unfortunately, I'm lazy. Fortunately, Leapfrog can all of the hard work for me. I drew a slice through the project, along the main zinc horizon.




I got leapfrog to create 50m and 100m (radii) buffers around each drill-hole.

Pink = under explored areas

I always do this as it shows me very quickly where there are un- and under-explored areas of a project, and as a simple geologist, I like to put holes in areas where they have a good change of getting high-grade zinc mineralization, like here:

Gaaaaaaapppp

That area is ripe for reaming. This is a perfect area for dumb exploration, simply whack a hole between 'em and you have an easy win! The area to the right of hole A12-008 could also do with a few holes as well, you'll get some decent grades for your PRs there.

However, this raises and interesting question for Tinka. Do they focus on drilling the known mineralization or start exploring the property for more deposits?

If they focus on drilling to improve the confidence in future resource calculations or keep looking for new deposits, and maybe even the BMF?

Tinka, Tailor, Soldier......Zinc!

Some new results from Tinka, so here is an update!

Summary:

• Hole A17-063 continued to give some excellent results. The lower zinc zone has been extended by >200m.
• However, drilling away from the core zone just hit narrow, albeit high-grade zones and veins
• Good potential to expand resources to the NW of holes 061 and 063 - Tinka are drilling holes 69, 70, 71 and 72 into this area and theses are holes to look out for as they could bring the size of the South Ayawilca deposit to >12Mt @ >7% Zn

I've also updated the Officially Bad (TM) resource table

A nice bump up in resources

I've also built up the Leapfrog Model (you can have a look at the 3D views - link), and included the faults from the plan map on the Tinka Website. I want to see how mineralization is related to the faults.

It sits nicely in the middle

We can see that the best mineralization is found between the 2 green faults. I've drawn a think black line to show what I think is the spine (i.e. the thickest part) of the mineralization.

It would be nice to see some holes to the SW (right) of hole A17-064

When we look at the section, we can see that hole A17-063 hit a high-grade, but relatively deep zinc zone, and the shallow zones hit by holes A17-056 and 061 don't continue to hole 063.

Why? Did they hit a vertical (chimney) zone of zinc mineralization, or is this upper zone hosted in a small, laterally discontinuous unit of favorable host rocks?

Left = horizontal mineralization; right = vertical chimney around hole A17-056

Tinka have been kind and included a map showing where the additional holes have been drilled, but the assay results haven't been released (it does take time to get the samples from the Andes down to Lima for analysis).

Tinka - Ayawilca

We have seen some decent hits from Tinka's Ayawilca project in Peru.

• 62.4m @ 5.6% Zn, inc. 17.9m @ 11.6% Zn (link)
• 51.9m @ 10.1% Zn, 62 g/t Ag (link)
• 18.6m @ 10.4% Zn and 52 g/t Ag (link)

Summary

• Drilling has hit multiple high-grade zinc (with Ag credits) lenses over a ~200m length
• officially bad tonnage guesstimate = 8Mt @ 4.7% Zn
• including a 2.3Mt core grading 7.2% Zn
• Early days, mineralization open to the north and south
• Faulting may have a significant impact on size of the deposit.

I've brought the data into Leapfrog Geo (you can get the 3D viewer file from here (link), back calculated the residual grades to see how everything looks.

Zinc

Multiple lenses

Silver

Silver is essentially in the same place as zinc

Lead

Lead is restricted to a few, narrow zones.

We see a number of zinc lenses, that appear to pinch-out to the NW and SE. What will be critical is what the faults (dashed black lines) do to the mineralization, are they:

• Pre-mineralization – minimal effect, but could have some high-grade Zn (+Ag) mineralization up them
• Post – offset the mineralization – i.e. the mineralization could be deeper or shallower

I was intrigued by the zonation (?) in different metals:

• Zinc appears to be relatively consistent, forming continuous >5% zones between the drill-holes, but there does appear to be higher grades in the Northwest.
• Silver - there are higher grade silver zones, several appear to be close to the northwest (left) fault, and there is a nice high-grade zone at depth.
• Lead - minimal lead, some high-ish grade intervals associated with the NW fault, but in general the Pb levels are very low.

It does appear that the NW fault could be an important controlling structure and may have some high-grade mineralization (a chimney) associated with it. It was a shame that hole A17-059 wasn't pushed on a bit further to test this fault at depth.

Hole 58 is interesting, does it show a continuation of this zinc zone to the NW or is it a separate zone or related zinc vein.chimney associated with the NW fault zone?

I did a quick and dirty 'resource' tallying

So that is a good start, so why don't we look at the upside

A Crap doodle - i'll be updating this

You can clearly see that the zinc zone is open to the NE and SW, and will offer good potential to define a good chunk of mineralization, as this zone is ~300m wide and so far drilling has focused (6 holes - 56A was an extension of 56, so i'm counting it as 1 hole), on a 100m section.

I'm also interesting to see what hole 59 will hit. I'm not very confident (maybe a couple of narrow zones) as mineralization is pinching out towards the NW fault, and my gut feel is that this fault is an important controlling structure, which either controlled the ore bearing fluids or has offset the mineralization.