Silver City Minerals Ltd (ASX:SCI) has stepped up drilling at its Copper Blow project near Broken Hill with a second rig added to the third round program.
A reverse circulation (RC) rig has been added to the diamond rig which has been operating at the copper-gold project where silver and cobalt has also been identified.
This will enable Silver City to speed up the third stage drilling.
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Diamond drilling began in early March on two previously permitted holes.
The company has recently received environmental permits for another 18 holes, allowing the RC program of around 4,000 metres to begin.
Silver City Minerals' tenements around Broken Hill.
Stage III drilling is designed to follow-up significant copper-gold intersections encountered in previous programs with a view to defining a mineral resource.
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In addition, it will test coincident geophysical and geochemical anomalies along strike from Copper Blow.
New holes will test sparsely drilled ground between the North and South zones, previously thought to be a fault zone as well as extensions to North Zone.
The program is expected to take about two months to complete.
Geophysical survey underway
Silver City has also started an induced polarisation (IP) geophysical survey.
This follows a trial of dipole-dipole and gradient array configurations over known mineralisation, which detected sulphides outlined in earlier drilling.
The more extensive IP survey has been initiated over 3.5 kilometres of strike and is aimed at defining zones of higher concentrations of sulphide minerals to aid in drill targeting.
Copper Blow is just 20 kilometres from the mining stronghold of Broken Hill.
It is a joint venture between Silver City Minerals (75%) and CBH Resources Ltd (25%) whereby each company contributes to exploration expenditure on a pro-rata basis.