Been there,

Excellent tutorial. It's a must read, especially non-experts. Thanks very much!

So, with this home-schooling I can now have some kind of an "educated" guess:

Barring any major mechanical malfunction (or hitting a fault line...more on this below) it should take about 3-5 days, assuming a 12-hour shift (?), to complete a 500m hole. Presumably, if they have two 12-hour shifts a day and drilling over the weekend as well then they can gain at least a factor of 2, i.e. One 7-day week around the clock drilling would produce from 2.8 (make this 3) to 4.7 (make this 5) holes/week/drill.

Using the round-off numbers, it would be from 3-5 holes per week/drill.

Let's also assume only 8 weeks of icy weather, one drill can chew up from 24-40 holes which is not bad at all. At 100 m interval along the strike line of sight toward the SE approximiately 10 holes would be required to complete the entire lake bed (100% PRB).

We can make use of all 4 drills, assuming that each drill location would accomodate 4 fan-out holes (just like what Dave has been doing).

From the above, the drilling capacity is more than plenty to complete the lake bed drilling during the 8 weeks of "good" freezing weather.

I would suggest that the extra capacity can be used to sink a hole or two in the PRB 100% claims (the land portion SE of the patented claims) to explore the potential of the extension of the HGZ. Line it up so that these holes would not cover the other guys' claims (My eye-balling extrapolation seems to indicate that the deposit may not cross those claims (at most nicking them at one corner). It sounds selfish, but PRB does not need to spend our money to help the other guys. LOL!

As mentioned above, It's my impression that a major disruption of the drilling of a hole could be caused by the drill bit hitting a fault (or on the wrong side of the fault). At least, there were a few instances where other companies have used this to terminate a hole (before it hit the mother load in subsequent drilling).

Question: Is it a genuine reason for abandonning a hole, or just an excuse for not revealing the deep dark secret at that time for competitive reasons. The company should know what kind of rock and what kind of structural formation after quite a few hundreds metres of core evidence.

There are a few faults lines in the Borden Gold Belt (and near the HGZ "extention") in the Kabuskashing Structural Zone. Would an experienced geo, like Dave, know which side of the fault to sink the drill?

Just my idle speculation.

Thanks again for your home schooling.

goldhunter