Legacy Minerals Ltd (ASX:LGM) has confirmed a ‘‘wide mineralised corridor’ from its maiden diamond drilling program at the Harden Gold Mine prospect, situated within the Harden Project in New South Wales.
To date, the company has completed six diamond drill holes at the prospect, intersecting broad assays including:
- 18 metres at 0.27g/t gold from 220 metres; and
- 1 metre at 1.36g/t from 134 metres.
What’s more, Legacy’s re-assay of reverse circulation (RC) hole RCHN005 has returned a high-grade intersection of 1 metre at 22.7g/t gold from 134 metres.
The company undertook this independent re-split and re-assay due to the ‘nuggety’ gold effect observed in the samples and has confirmed confidence in this technique.
“Significant mineralised system”
Legacy managing director Christopher Byrne said: “While not replicating the success of the initial reverse circulation drilling, the diamond drill program has confirmed a significant mineralised system and delivered significant geological insight into the Harden Gold Mine mineralisation providing LGM with additional data for its geological model.
“It was disappointing that two of the priority drill holes intersected unmapped workings, however, these are the first ever diamond cored holes drilled into the prospect and the campaign has confirmed and highlighted the scale and extent of the mineralised system.
“The Harden Project has significant potential which remains untested over the 1.2-kilometre mineralised strike.
“The company is developing drill targets to test part of the southern strike at McMahons Reef that saw historical intercepts including 3.6 metres at 21.7g/t gold.
“In the near term, we will focus our exploration efforts on the Bauloora, Cobar and Rockley Projects.”
Diamond drilling program
To date, Legacy has completed six diamond holes totalling 1,714 metres with an additional hole abandoned at 83.4 metres due to difficult drilling conditions.
Two of the six diamond-core drill holes intersected undocumented stoped ground including the deepest hole under old workings.
Due to the stoped ground being intersected, the depth extension of the Harden Gold Mine is yet to be fully tested.
This is the first diamond drilling into the Harden Gold Mine prospect and confirms a wide mineralised corridor.
Notably, this mineralisation is hosted within a 1.2-kilometre long shear zone, with down-hole widths up to 55 metres.
Re-assays confirm confidence
Legacy’s initial RC drilling recorded assays that included 2 metres at 19.09g/t gold and 3 metres at 5.12g/t.
Due to the very high grades, observed visible gold in quartz, and field duplicates indicating a potential nugget effect within sampling, LGM undertook an independent re-split and re-assay of the original drilled bulk samples within the mineralised zone.
The results confirmed confidence in the technique and the high-grade results as well as the variability in assay results caused by an interpreted coarse gold nugget effect even at lower grades of gold (>0.2g/t gold).
Forward plan
Legacy has identified significant opportunities and is targeting additional high-grade zones along strike and at depth, as drilling has only tested 300 metres of the known mineralised strike.
In addition to the future work at the Hardens prospect, the company will also aim to test the depth and strike potential of the McMahons Reef Gold Mine prospect.
In the immediate future, the company is focusing on its work at the Bauloora, Cobar and Rockley projects.