Shares in Ashton Mining of Canada (ACA-T) were 11, or nearly 10%, higher at $1.24 in afternoon trading in Toronto after the diamond explorer said that some newly discovered boulders on the Foxtrot property in north-central Quebec had yielded diamonds.
The boulders were discovered in four new areas between the property’s diamondiferous Renard kimberlite cluster and Lynx dyke system. The boulders lie between 700 metres and 1.7 km west of the Renard cluster. Ashton and equal partner Soquem believe the boulders lie close to their source, and plan an exploration drill program for late August.
Caustic dissolution of a 100-kg sample from the boulders yielded a total of 279 diamonds, with 14 of the stones measuring at least 0.425 mm; the largest stone was retained by a 1.18-1.70-mm sieve.
In addition, the partners have also turned up some kimberlitic float material in three other areas. About 20 km away from the Renard cluster, several boulders were found coincident with an indicator mineral anomaly and associated geophysical anomaly. At the Southeast anomaly, 3 km southeast of Renard 3, the pair found a 200 kg boulder; another boulder is located 1 km south of the southern limit of the Lynx South dyke system.
Meanwhile, an excavator is on its way to collect some 30 tonnes of kimberlitic dyke material from three or more locations along 1.9-km strike length of the Lynx dyke system. The material will be processed for diamonds by dense media separation at Ashton’s North Vancouver laboratory.
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