Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX:RIM) used 50-year-old drill cores to find gold and antimony intercepts at the Broken Hill Base Metal Project, located 30km northwest of Broken Hill in New South Wales.
Resampling and analysing old diamond drill cores from CRA Exploration (1976) and Seltrust Mining Corporation (1983) confirmed intercepts in chlorite-sericite-quartz schists at the Windy Ridge gold antimony prospect.
Another 42 quarter core samples were “strongly weathered and partly degraded”.
Assay results show one historical diamond hole returned 9 metres at 1.08 grams per tonne of gold from 235m, as well as 8m at 1.03g/t of gold from 254m.
Another historical diamond hole returned 5.30m at 1.20g/t of gold from 189.40m, including 0.40m at 9.70g/t of gold from 189.40m, and 1.50m at 1.47g/t of gold from 193.20m.
Rock chip samples collected during 1976 drilling returned individual antimony values of up to 1.4%.
“Recent resampling work has successfully confirmed and validated gold antimony within original diamond holes, 40 to 50 years after they were drilled,” Managing Director David Hutton says.
“Resampling has also highlighted anomalous silver, lead, and zinc, which is not surprising given the prospect is located only 30km south of Broken Hill within the same rocks that host the town’s world-class Line of Lode silver-lead-zinc deposits.”
Rimfire now plans to carry out further drilling in between widely spaced traverses of 160 metres apart at Windy Ridge.
This activity will aim to test for potential internal ‘high-grade’ gold and antimony within the 600m-long mineralised zone.
New drilling is also required to test for supergene gold mineralisation within weathered or oxidised rocks at historical intercepts and beneath surface rock chips that have up to 37g/t of gold.
Rimfire Pacific Mining is a critical minerals exploration company with assets mainly in New South Wales and South Australia.
Write to Richard Szabo at Mining.com.au
Images: Rimfire Pacific Mining
