Hi
@Seth Davis
I noticed that you are following the discussion and I remember I owe you an answer from a previous discussion.
You will recall that in the 3D model (published in figure 4 of the commencement of cave mining announcement) I had managed to count about 11 completed ore drifts/drives on level 1105 of the mine and some partially completed drives on this and other levels. Read this post if you don't recall
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/an...4580935/page-12?post_id=36894595#.XDmmqxo_WhA
With the information I just found in that figure on page 40 of the JORC notes to the 2016 feasibilty study its possible to roughly calculate how much ore these 11 completed drifts might actually represent.
I don't know the width of the orebody in this area but JW in numerous talks has described the orebody to be 20m wide.
As mentioned in one of my recent posts the drifts have a sectional area of 25m2 (ie 5m x 5m) and have a vertical separation of 25m (sorry I had said 35m but on closer review of the diagram I see that it is actually 25m) and a horizontal separation of 15m.
11 ore drives represent 11 x 15 meters of strike length along the orebody, with the abilty to capture an ore block measuring approximately 165m x 20m x 25m = 82,500 m3. Using a density of 3 g/cm3 this equals 247,500 tonnes.
This is probably a slight overestimation as the orebody is steeply dipping but not perfectly vertically dipping. Also the ring pattern of drilling leaves some material that forms the ore shoots which is not captured until the next lower level is developed.
I think you can safely say if my calculation is correct that 11 ore drives represent about 200,000 tonnes of ore or about one month of steady state ore production. If you look at the cross section of the orebody in figure 2 in the same announcement the SLC rings are depicted as extending for more than 20m though. It looks like more than double that towards the top of the orebody, in which case those 11 ore drives could easily represent two or more months of UG production.
I suppose the naysayers will claim that the 3D model has been falsified somehow. Anyone is free to do the calculation for themselves from the information provided in the company announcements. Esh
