Vedron tallies resource at Fuller

Surrounded by some of the most productive mines of the Porcupine gold camp, the Fuller property, southeast of Timmins, Ont., yielded only limited amounts of gold from mining efforts in the 1950s and 1980s. But now the drill program mounted over the past year by Vedron Gold (VDGI-C) has provided the basis for a newly delineated gold deposit.

According to the new reserve calculations, the deposit contains 2.6 million tonnes grading an average 7.4 grams gold per tonne (2.8 million tons at 0.22 oz. per ton). So far, only 146,000 tonnes are in the proven and probable category; the rest is classified as drill-indicated or inferred.

The estimate is based on a cutoff grade of 1.7 grams per tonne, but higher cutoff grades have comparatively little effect on the tonnage. When the cutoff grade is shifted to 2.6 grams, the resource shrinks to 2 million tonnes grading 8.9 grams per tonne. And at a cutoff of 3.4 grams, it is 1.6 million

tonnes grading 10.4 grams.

The blocked resource extends from the property’s eastern boundary with the Paymaster mine of Placer Dome (PDG-T), west along strike of the Fuller zone about 760 metres, and from surface to old workings of the Buffalo Ankerite mine at a depth of 472 metres. The proven and probable reserve is entirely in the developed section of the Fuller mine, which operated briefly from a decline ramp in the 1980s.

The mineralization — a series of silicified zones with disseminated pyrite and occasional visible gold — lies in chloritic volcanic rocks that have been intruded by a felsic porphyry and strongly sheared. The deposit has traditionally been thought to occupy a fold, but the recent drilling suggests the main west-northwest plane of shearing may continue past the fold nose, with a number of faulted blocks creating the appearance of a fold in plan view.

It followed directly from the fold-nose interpretation that the deposit did not extend past the Edwards shaft, which was used for some minor production in the 1920s. New drilling has extended the deposit at least 200 metres to the west, and the drilled zones are open along strike to the southwest.

Two zones — the Contact and HW (Hanging Wall) — were exploited in the 1980s and form the main part of the newly calculated resource. Seven other zones uncovered in the present project — three footwall zones, three carbonate zones (also in the footwall), and another (resembling the Contact and

HW), called the ML zone — have been included only in the inferred category.

The recently released drill results appear to be bearing out the new interpretation of the structure, with holes drilled west and downdip from the decline workings picking up intersections that appear to be extensions of the Contact and HW zones. These have yielded grades ranging from a fraction of a gram per tonne up to 54.2 grams (the latter over a 2-metre core length).

Another intersection in the extension of the Contact zone, immediately down-dip from the lowermost decline workings, graded 15.4 grams over 5.9 metres.

The ML zone routinely graded 1 to 4 grams in recent drilling, with one 3.3-metre intersection grading 8.9 grams.

A second phase of drilling is under way, testing the extension of the resource downdip toward lower workings of the Buffalo Ankerite mine at a vertical depth of about 777 metres. These workings encountered grades of 4.8 to 8.2 grams over true widths of 2 to 3 metres.

Initial drilling in this area has intersected the Contact zone, grading 1 gram over a core length of 2.2 metres.