Sun Metals - Stardust in Central BC

There are very few 'new' discoveries being made, and most junior explorers are flogging dead dogs that have been around for such a long time that most you can ignore.

This was my initial opinion of Sun Metal's Stardust project, it had a tiny resource but has had a lot of work done on it, ~398 RC and diamond holes, or ~70Km of drilling.

Not much here

What a POS - a small, low-grade, well explored project in the middle of nowhere. The didn't seem to be much potential in the existing resources. They appeared to consist of a series of narrow, variable grade zones that have had the crap drilled out of them. 

lots of narrow zones

So where were Sun Metal's going to find more mineralization? Projects like Stardust are quite common for it to go any further, you want to see some potential that it could host resources around >10Mt @ >3% CuEq to get a mid-tier miner (e.g. Crapstone) involved.

I'm just focusing on the skarn mineralization. I know that the project has several other mineralization styles, but they aren't the focus on the technical report, which suggests that they aren't important economically. You can get the 3D model from here (link), there was only a small proportion of the historic data that I could get in.

For those getting massive erections from the Porphyry zone, it has been drilled and no results are mentioned in the technical report, so I assume that it is unmineralized, but the lack of mineralization in it could be:

• Negative (the majority of intrusive rocks) the magma that formed the stock was relatively metal poor, and therefore any mineralization associated with it will be small and uneconomic.
• Positive (e.g. Santa Eulalia, Mexico; Taylor, Arizona, Las Bambas, Peru to name a few) – the stock was emplaced into a reactive rock (the limestones) that 'sucked' out all of the metals to form large skarn/CRD bodies leaving the behind an unmineralized porphyry.

However, the recent drilling (link and link) did look interesting. I wanted to check that they were doing more than confirmation drilling, i.e. twinning good old holes to con people into believing that they had found something new.

Simply put, they did a bit of both. Tested the known zones (probably because the historic core is missing), and they tested a few geophysical targets.

The good news that came out in October was from a confirmation hole (i.e. one that was drilled into an area that had been drilled before), and we got this section.



We can clearly see that the majority of the skarns are hosted in narrow limestone units within the phyllite package, which explains the narrow, irregular nature of the resources, which is not a good situation if you want to find a big deposit!



However, drill-hole 18SD-421 was good, it drilled through the phyllites and passed into the underlying limestones where it intersected 2 previously unknown, thick, high-grade skarn/massive sulfide zones.

This is great news as it shows that Sun Metals has found something new, rather than rehashing old news, and it appears that this phyllite-limestone contact is virtually undrilled! This zone appears to be open in most directions, especially up-dip.

The down-dip potential could be limited by hole LD2010-02 that may have drilled the down-dip continuation of this zone but hit nothing, but the hole may have been terminated before hitting the mineralized horizon.

I don't know the ground conditions at Stardust, but maybe there is an opportunity to reenter and extend holes 013 and 016 to drill through the phyllite-limestone contact as this would allow them to quickly determine (in 2D) the orientation and up-dip extent of this new skarn zone.

In summary, Sun Metals have a well explored project, but the discovery by hole 421 has identified a new target that has returned the highest-grade and thickest skarn intercepts on the project. However, with just a single hole intersecting this zone it is very hard to determine its size potential. 

In addition, they may want to look at conducting a down-hole geophysical survey, for example Mise-à-la-masse that has been used successfully in many other polymetallic sulphide deposits to determine its lateral extents.

GT Gold - more holes in the (North) Saddle

We've had a new PR from GT Gold (link). Some interesting results, but the market didn't like them.

Summary:

Good News

• The >0.5% CuEq mineralization appears to come to surface (hole TTD108)

The Bad News

• High-grade mineralization restricted to a specific zone (the Stock-work zone)
• This zone appears to be discontinuous (i.e. it doesn't seem to join up well between drill-holes), and the best zone is deep

Overall, I don't see, from the data presented, much evidence that the North Saddle zone will grow into something huge. The best mineralization appears to be inconsistent, with the best intercepts at depth.

In More detail....

In my last post I was partially correct about a preferred 'trend' in the mineralization. In fact, on the sections provided in this PR we can see that virtually all of the good mineralization is found in a specific 'unit' - what is labelled as the intense stockwork zone.

I've highlighted on the sections that accompanied the PR.



You can clearly see why hole TTD098 missed. It was drilled parallel to the stockworks just clipped it. Imaging if this hole had been drilled a degree steeper, it would have hit >300m @ >1% CuEq. The market would have liked that.

From the sections I've tried to model this zone in 3D (file here - link).



We can see that the stockwork zone is:

• Narrow (~max thickenss 250m)
• inconsistent (forms separate, probably discrete zones)
• Steeply dipping to the SW

Unfortunately, for me, I can't see how the Stockwork zone is going to get much bigger.

• On section 5620 (the most northwesterly section) the zone is very narrow and runs along the fault.
• On section 5830 (the most southeasterly section), the stockwork zone again is very small and deep
• Only on section 5740 do we get 2 zones
• upper narrow zone (hole TTD106 and 108 - approx 100m wide) that continues to surface
• lower deep zone (TTD093) that starts at 400-450m depth, that is ~200m wide

We have to remember these section are ~160m apart, which makes that stockwork zone quite small.

I'm certain that hole TTD109 will get something great (probably 400m @ >0.75 g/t Au and 0.5% Cu starting from 700m depth), but so what. All it will be doing is confirming what was hit in hole TTD093, it won't tell us anything new, we already know that they have some moderate mineralization at depth. To be special and make this project, hole 109 need to get something special.

GT Gold Corp - Back in the Saddle

That teaches me for not paying close attention to the market, a spectacular rise in GTT.V share price after some juicy porphyry hits at Saddle North.

Obviously, you can remind me of my terrible comment from my last post (link).

I suck..

So, we'll ignore the drilling at the Saddle deposit, the market doesn't care about these, and focus on the porphyry.

You can get a Leapfrog viewer file here (link) to look at it in 3D-goodness.

At the moment it is early days, we have the data from 3.5 holes (hole TTD062 stopped before hitting the guts of the porphyry), so it is hard to know the full scale of the mineralization (this is me covering my ass), but the IP data may give us a hint.

I'm ignoring the mag data as it doesn't really help us (there is a huge anomaly), but the IP data may give us a potential size of the porphyry system.



and a close up...

It looks like the copper mineralization is found in a 500m long by 200-300m wide zone. From the sections, this zone dips to the SW, and may also dip to the NW (based on the fact that the Western n changeability high associated with the pyrite halo is more subdued, suggesting that it is at greater depth).

I'm also intrigued by the fact that in none of the literature do GT Gold mention any bornite, just chalcopyrite and pyrite. At another small porphyry deposits in the area we see this:

Bornite in the middle like jam in a donut

The best grades are found in the core, which often a lot of bornite, as we see no mention of this, there is a good chance that they still haven't drilled it. My guess is that it will be found to the west of hole TTD092.

Circle marks the spot..

When I look at the Saddle North Plan map (link), I noticed that a couple of the drill-holes, TTD098 and TTD107, don't appear to be optimally located. They appear to be targeting the pyrite halo and may only hit erratic, low-grade intervals (<0.25% CuEq with narrow zones of ~0.5% CuEq).



However, I'll be very interested to see what hole TTD102 gets, this could hit the bornite core and could get some decent, thick intervals of high-grade (>1% CuEq) mineralization.

I'm also interested in hole TTD106, if this gets grades similar to TTD085 (100+m @ >0.3 g/t Au and >0.3% Cu), this would be very positive as when you look at the sections, you can see that the highest grade mineralization starts at ~400m depth.



Is this potentially too deep?