Calpine bids to avoid errors in Eskay Creek assay results

Included in the 122 holes released from Eskay Creek so far was a 682.2 ft interval which averaged 0.875 oz gold, 0.97 oz silver, 1.12% lead and 2 .26% zinc.

Rather than take a selected sub sample of the interval and have it fire assayed, the partners are taking the total core section and crushing al most all of it to 150 mesh.

Contents, including the small percentage of larger particles, are then seived, smelted down and re-homogenized before the gold content is measured by classica l fire assaying techniques.

“Once you have done it this way, there is very litte room to argue about what is in the core,” said John Barakso, a geochemist with Vancouver-based Min-En Lab oratories.

“If you split the core you only have a 50-50 chance of knowing where the gold is going,” said Barakso, who developed the Metallic technique in Vancouver 10 ye ars ago.

“The metallic technique is particularly suited to core samples containing a lot of visible gold,” added Walter Grondin, vice-president of sales at Technical S ervices Laboratories in Mississauga, Ont. His company is assaying the Calpine co re.

Visible gold tends to be unevenly distributed throughout the core and therefore it is difficult to measure properly.

However, Grondin said the nugget effect has not been prominent in the Eskay Creek material he has seen so far.

As reported (N.M., Aug 28/89), the stratabound deposit which Calpine and Stikine Silver are drilling appears to be similar to the epithermal gol d deposits in Nevada.

“Gold mineralization repeats quite nicely through their assays,” said Grondin.

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