Silica ore mine at Crystal Mtn Nevada: Printable property video tour text
We are west of Hathorne, Nevada, about 13 to 15 miles. We are up at 8,000 feet, and over there is the Sierra Nevada range.
The upper bench is mostly high grade silica used in silica metal. There is some decorative stone here also.Someone once said, "The problem with mines is they always seem to be located in mountains ." Thank goodness, as it is always easier using gravity to move material. And, the pathway is downhill all the way to a railroad.
Over to the right is high-grade. On this lower bench here. The slope in the area is more of the decroative stone, but the very white is up in the 99 purity. This is some of the higher grade silica. It runs about 99.5. As you may have noticed throughout the property there are some high grades in it, some of it on the lower slope below us here. Most of it is used is silica metal, fillers, paints. General Electric is one of the users of that particular quality.The exciting thing about high-grade silica is that the uses for quality material has been expanding. Experiments in the fineness of the grind has lead the highest quality bringing $600 per ton for the finished product.
In this small draw down here we estimate there are 250 tons of the lichen driven stone. Some of the decorative stone. This stone, this boulder here. is in excess of three tons. You can see the quality of the linage, and some lichen on the stone. These are quartz-silica boulders. The site above us is the mini-quarry that these stones came out of. Most are heavy fracture and we can dig them out without drilling and blasting, we just rip. A lichen bolder of almost 20 tons, or 40,000 pounds, of a heavy ìdarkî lichen. For a heavy boulder, it is one of the top of a lichen field.What seems the most wildly bizarre to hard rock precious metals miners in Nevada is that, what seems to them just rubble, can be picked up, stacked on a wooden palette, and sold for cash money.
Question:
Well James, what do you think that rock would be worth?
Answer:
Approximately $25,000 dollars as a decorative stone.
Question:
And where do you think they would use the rock like that?
Answer:
Most probably in a park or a rock back setting. A piece of a waterfall or next to a waterfall where it would pick up the moisture and feed the lichen that is on it. To rejuvenate the lichen you use a yeast, or you can use just a straight beer, to keep the lichen alive, about once or twice a year.
Question:
These more modest sized rocks, who would use those, where is the market, who wants them?
Answer:
Landscapers that build waterfalls. And because we would drill the bolder so that water could be piped up, it would be a natural flow. In the event they wanted to drill a single one inch hole all the way, and a core hole down they could plant bonsai trees in them. The Japanese trees. Plant medium growth starters and it shows, it looks in nature as a natural growth. It almost going to higher altitudes to sugar cone pines, where they are stunted.
Question:
This sounds as if their is some retail market.
Answer:
Yes there are retail markets in themselves. For example, the ìcandy rockî down below. A company up in Reno in the past has sold 500 truckloads of candy rock a year.
Pay attention in this interview to the volume of "candy rock," sold off of this property. At $45 a ton FOB! If we were presenting a placer gold prospect with the same values, what a "delicious" investment find this would be.
Question:
Well this is a pretty big property. How much do you estimate the reserves of useable material are?
Answer:
There are probably 20 millions tons here.
Question:
Twenty million tons?
Answer:
Without drilling the bottom benches where the high grade silica is. There is some very high grade silica in an area about 300 to 400 foot long, and 250 feet wide. We think that goes down to a depth of around 1,500 feet, so that would be another reserve of the high grade 99.5% silica that would be used for silica metal.
Question:
That would seem to translate to well over 100 million dollars.
Answer:
In value here in gross value of the material.
Question: Would you rather have the "projected total gross potential" of a property presented in a Enron style spreadsheet, or actually have the guy who has run the project, do the arm waving?
At this time a decorative rock company has an offer on the table, with an interesting price per pound FOB the quarry. The problem is that accepting might make it difficult to mine and market the high grade silica at the same time.
Contact
Silica Ore.com Editor:
Barry Murray
1121 Harrison Ave. Suite 333 Centralia, WA 98531
Phone: 503-753-5868
E-Mail: editor@silica-ore.com
Contact Us: Address: 1121 Harrison Ave. Suite 333 Centralia, WA 98531
E-Mail: Info@Silica-Ore.com
Bobby Murray Editor, Editor@IndustrialMinerals.org
Copyright © 2004-2008 IndustrialMinerals.org all rights reserved
E-Mail: Info@Silica-Ore.com
Bobby Murray Editor, Editor@IndustrialMinerals.org
Copyright © 2004-2008 IndustrialMinerals.org all rights reserved