Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX: RIM, “Rimfire” or “the Company”) is pleased to advise that re-assaying of aircore drill samples from the Murga Scandium Prospect has demonstrated a significant increase in scandium grade for the prospect, which is located on Rimfire’s Fifield Project 70kms NW of Parkes NSW (Figure 1).
Highlights
- Re-assaying of March 2024 aircore drill samples increases average scandium grade by 11% with some samples achieving 25 – 50% increases
- Maiden Murga North JORC Resource to be estimated in conjunction with Melrose maiden JORC resource estimate
- Planning for further aircore and diamond drilling to determine the lateral extents and infill wide spaced anomalies of the scandium at Murga underway
- All scandium exploration funded by exploration partner GPR with a further $250K received during the last month
Commenting on the announcement, Rimfire’s Managing Director Mr David Hutton said: “Re-assaying of 260 aircore samples from the March 2024 Murga drill program using a total digest analytical method has increased scandium grades by an average of 11% across all of the samples, with several examples where grade increases of 25 – 50% were achieved.
This is a significant development as the re-assay data demonstrate that the actual scandium grades for Murga could be significantly higher than the original drill intercepts previously reported by Rimfire and reinforces the potential of Murga to host a large-scale pure scandium resource.
On the back of these great results, Rimfire has decided to estimate a JORC resource for the Murga North portion of Murga, which will be carried out in conjunction with the upcoming Melrose JORC resource estimate”.
Re-assaying of Samples
Original assaying of drill samples from the reconnaissance March 2024 Murga aircore drilling program was undertaken using a 4-acid digestion / ICP analysis technique which is considered a “partial digest” analytical method and was used by Rimfire to cost effectively “screen” large numbers of drill samples generated by the drill program (see Rimfire’s ASX Announcement dated 6 May 2024).
Having identified multiple scandium occurrences at Murga (i.e. Murga North, Murga Northwest, Murga East and Murga South, Rimfire subsequently resubmitted 260 of the most anomalous samples (greater than 120ppm Sc) from the drilling for additional scandium analysis using the more expensive lithium borate fusion XRF method.
This technique is a “whole digest” analytical method whereby a fused disk of the sample is created and analysed with XRF spectroscopy. The assay grade achieved by this method is considered to be a more representative scandium assay value.
The additional assaying aimed to confirm and potentially increase the scandium assay values obtained from the 4-acid digestion / ICP analysis method. Where the two methods have been previously employed on other Rimfire scandium prospects in the area, the lithium borate fusion method has typically increased individual scandium assay values by 5 – 10%.
As shown in Table 1, the most recent batch of lithium borate fusion XRF assaying returned an average increase in scandium assay values of 11% compared to the corresponding assay value obtained from the 4-acid digestion / ICP analysis method. There were also several individual samples that showed an increase in scandium grade of 25 – 50%.
The lithium borate fusion XRF results are important as they demonstrate that the actual scandium grades for Murga could be significantly higher than the original Murga drill intercepts (calculated using the 4-acid digestion / ICP analysis technique) previously reported by Rimfire (see Rimfire’s ASX Announcement dated 6 May 2024).
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