Lode Resources hits new highs in deepest Webbs Consol silver find to date

Lode Resources (ASX: LDR) continues to expand its promising Webbs Consol silver-base metals project – with a new hole hitting two high-grade intercepts in drilling in the historic New England Fold Belt region of north-eastern New South Wales.

The latest results from drilling at Webbs Consol has identified the deepest high-grade hit to date with results confirming a combined intercept of 221.2m at 569 grams per tonne silver equivalent.

The high-grade mineralisation has been drilled to at least a vertical depth of 280m and provided the highest downhole endowment of all drill intercepts received to date at the Tangoa West target.

Significantly, Lode has defined high-grade mineralisation from surface down to a vertical depth of at least 280m in the current Webbs Consol program at Tangoa West.

Rich mineral endowment

Managing director, Ted Leschke, said this highlights the rich mineral endowment of the Tangoa West lode and further confirms the upside of the entire Webbs Consol silver base metals system.

“WCS052 is a very exciting drill hole as it demonstrates that the Webbs Consol silver-base metals system hosts mineralised lodes of considerable size in addition to the high-grade nature of mineralisation as demonstrated in multiple drill hole intercepts to date. These two characteristics are the hallmarks of a well-endowed mineral system,” Mr Leschke said.

The company will now investigate whether the two high-grade intercepts in hole WCS052 represent two separate high-grade lodes or, are a single high-grade lode with a wavering longitudinal boundary or an internal highly altered pendant.

“Either way, mineralisation a Tangoa West remains open at depth. Follow-up drill holes are planned to further delineate the high-grade Tangoa West load at depth.”

The company has also obtained further promising assays from Tangoa West with results including 30.7m at 376g/t silver equivalent from 79.0m in drill hole WCS051.

Multiple drill targets

The current Webbs Consol drill program is testing the Tangoa West lode along with depth testing other lodes discovered by earlier drilling and investigating several new targets.

Lode has planned a program of approximately 26 holes for approximately 5,000 metres of drilling.

Tangoa West is the most targeted prospect with 11 holes for 3,000m planned down to a depth of a proximately 450m.

Lode is coming at Tangoa West from multiple directions with a strategy to assess variations in lode dip and plunge whilst at the same time providing enough data to potentially calculate a resource in the future.

Significant base metals upside

Discovered in 1890 with intermittent mining up to the mid-1950s, Webbs Consol has significant multi-element upside.

The licence area contains a number of historic small, high-grade, silver-lead-zinc-gold deposits.

Interestingly, in several mine shafts which were worked for the high-grade galena and silver content, the then miners elected to ignore the high-grade zinc mineralisation they encountered.

Historical sampling has already identified the potential for high-grade silver and zinc mineralisation at Webbs Consol. It was reported that 12 spot samples taken from the lowest level (60m) of the main shaft averaged 210 grams per tonne silver, 22.6% zinc and 2.74% lead.