This is a total of 31.34 m of high-grade Li and Ta mineralization in longitudinal drill hole PWM-18-123.
Generally, 200 ppm Ta is considered to be ore grade for Tantalum mineralization.
Pollucite is rare in pegmatites in Ontario, as it has only been identified in five pegmatite localities in the province: Power Metals owned Case Lake, Tot Lake and Marko’s pegmatites and two other localities. Pollucite indicates extreme fractionation of the pegmatitic melt and suggests that the West Joe Dyke is more fractionated than the Main Dyke at Case Lake. The presence of pollucite in drill core is spatially associated with high grade Lithium and Tantalum mineralization and should indicate very low iron contents in the spodumene (Figure 1). The presence of pollucite increases the potential to find more spodumene pegmatite dykes with Li, Ta and Cs mineralization near the West Joe Dyke.
Table 1. West Joe Dyke drill hole assays for drill holes PWM-18-118 to 127.
PWM-18-119 has no significant Li values.
Table 2 West Joe Dyke Cs2O % assays for drill holes PWM-18-111 to 127.
Figure 1 PWM-18-124, Boxes 1 to 3, 0.33 – 12.53 m. Note abundant green spodumene. Pink pollucite is above the 11 m wooden tag.
Drill hole collar locations are given in Table 3 and are plotted in Figures 2 and 3. Drill holes intersect the pegmatite dyke at approximately 90° except for longitudinal holes PWM-18-122, 123 and 124, thus intersected mineralized widths are close to true widths for all holes except for these three.
West Joe spodumene pegmatite is located 1.6 km southwest of the western edge of the Main Dyke and 3.0 km southwest of the Northeast Dyke (Figure 2). West Joe, Main and Northeast Dykes occur along a SW-NE trend (Figure 2). As the spodumene mineralization is the same in all three dykes and the dykes are along the same trend, the 3.0 km area between West Joe, Main and the Northeast Dykes is a large exploration target for potentially more spodumene pegmatites.
Figure 2 Case Lake Property showing the location of West Joe Dyke, Main Dyke, East and Northeast Dyke drilling.
Figure 3 Location of drill hole collars for West Joe Dyke drill program, Case Lake Property.
Table 3 Drill hole collar locations on West Joe Dyke, Case Lake Property. UTM NAD 83, Zone 17. DGPS survey.