I find it interesting in the last NR that it says down dip of a vein/s has been tested. Now this is a tricky thing if the veins are narrow,and should not even be attempted on narrow structures.

To date the drilling has tested a variety of targets including:

- Titan 24 geophysical targets (including chargeability highs, resistivity lows, and gradients);

- Down-dip and along- strike extensions of known gold- bearing quartz veins;

- Coincident geophysical and geological targets.

http://steliasmines.com/newsrelease/diamond-drilling-update-tesoro-gold-project-in-peru/

If it had said the structure that contains the veins, ie, faults, then that is understandable because the width of these structures can be significant on the Tesoro, with widths in the meters, making it not so an elusive target as a 20-30 cm vein, for instance. Also again, we know the grades of veins, its the other auriferous conduits we need info on. Also, in the release, I see no specification on any hole that tested a down dip, maybe these are holes to be reported on yet.

I also have to say, that by the widths represented in the drill results to date, there are no considerable widths that would require down dip testing, however historical data contradicts the appearance of the drill results to date. Furthermore, it would be futile to test downdip on such low grades released thus far, if the widths were too narrow and grades low, you have nothing worth pusuing in this manner. Then jumping back to historical data for a moment, we see gold bearing structures as wide as 50m, so it would be more plausible to downdip test these structures instead of individual veins.

So, if we are downdip testing veins, then they must have found some wider auriferous veins that could possibly be tested in this manner. These veins would also have to be meters wide, enough to keep a drill within for long periods to depth. The drill will naturally bend the deeper it goes and if there isn,t sufficient width to keep it on course, it will deflect from the hardest substance being drilled toward the most less resistant, being the host rock or something less dense than quartz itself. Thats why it is a waste of time to attempt this on narrow veins, and every geo knows this, its elementary. The mention of faults being flooded with quartz on the Chance F claim, optioned to Capitol 88, suggests that the veins there associated with the faults are of considerable width. And if you think of the Tesoro, where veins were not looked for in the depressions made by the bigger faults, because of overburden,then the chances of us having wider veins on or near the surface just went up. One of these such areas could be the area of Chance 5. Nevertheless, bigger veins generally have lower grades than narrow veins in some areas, and although wider, have the same economic value of narrow veins. In this scenario, you don,t look for the wide veins, the concentrations of narrow or off shoots will tend to be your highest grades near surface. At depth, this can quite often change, then your main conduit/vein could have higher grades than the off shoots, because remember, this gold came from depths and you need apply phsyics here to help understand how the mechanism works.

So, to get back to the subject, again the NR left more questions than answers. The old commercial of Oil of Olay comes to mind, keep them guessing.

IMO