The
Thor Lake Tantalum property (also known as the Lake Zone) is located in the
Northwest Territories, approximately 60km southeast of Yellowknife and 4km
north of Great Slave Lake. The property consists of a single mining lease
(1053 ha) in which Strongbow presently has an option to earn a 51% interest
from
Beta Minerals Inc. by meeting certain payment and work requirements.
The property covers the tantalum-bearing Lake Zone of the Blatchford Lake
Intrusive Complex, a multiphase Proterozoic plutonic ring complex intruding
Archean metasedimentary
rocks of the Yellowknife Supergroup. Highwood Resources Ltd. (now Beta) first
investigated the tantalum bearing Lake Zone in 1977 as a potential niobium
deposit. Subsequent work completed by Placer Development outlined a drill
indicated resource
of 70 million tons grading 0.03% Ta2O5 and 0.4% Nb2O5, 1.7% combined REE, and
3.5% Zr. Tantalum mineralization, primarily in the form of ferrocolumbite,
was relatively fine grained, and could not be concentrated by gravity separation
techniques in common use at the time the ‘Resource’ was determined.
With recent advances in recovery of fine-grained columbite, Strongbow has initiated
a re-examination of the tantalum potential of the Lake Zone. Work on remaining
sections of well preserved drill core from the Lake Zone has included a series
of grinding and de-sliming tests and flotation in an attempt to produce a bulk
concentrate. Results of this work have been more successful than previous attempts,
producing a bulk concentrate amenable to being treated by hydro-metallurgical
processes. Further work is required to improve the concentration ratio of the
bulk concentrate and mineralogical and metallurgical investigations are continuing
throughout 2004.