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Diamond & Specialty Minerals Summary for June 6, 2023

by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a so-so 98-93-119 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose two points to 612. Ewan Mason's Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) lost one-half cent to eight cents on 109,000 shares.

The wait goes on for word of the terms under which Star will get back the 75-per-cent interest in the FalCon diamond project in central Saskatchewan held by Rio Tinto, but the wait looks to be far longer for meaningful progress at the project. At last weeks annual general meeting, Mr. Mason, chairman and interim chief executive officer, said that he and George Read, his senior technical adviser, were working on ideas to model their way to feasibility, but he set a two-year timetable for the work.

With Star Diamond looking to avoid large and costly bulk sampling at Orion South, Mr. Mason and Mr. Read are looking westward with an eye to keeping their crew busy while they model toward FalCon feasibility. Mr. Read says there are several diamondiferous kimberlites on the company's 50-per-cent-owned Buffalo Hills property in Alberta, and a few have "slightly elevated Type IIa goods." As well, he cheered, at the K6 kimberlite "there is a very unusual population of beautiful yellow diamonds."

Those characteristics have Star Diamond applauding the potential for the recovery of large, plus-100-carat, high-value diamonds from a future mine. The work ahead, Mr. Read says, initially needs to focus on augmenting those results for K6, deeming the project an "opportunity that needs to be explored." Indeed, Star's recent modelling exercises for K6 show the 86-stone, 16.76-carat parcel collected over a decade ago to have a predicted value of $185 (U.S.) per carat, roughly in line with Orion South at FalCon.

Mr. Mason, meanwhile, was on the same page as Mr. Read. He said that Star Diamond would "poke some holes in the Buffalo Hills joint venture and see if we can't come up with some big juicy yellow diamonds." He offered no timetable for the poking, or any other work on the Buffalo Hills project, but it could come sooner rather than later, as without help from Rio Tinto, Star Diamond does not have the financial wherewithal to collect a big bulk sample from Orion South.

Drilling on the Buffalo Hills kimberlites could be accomplished on a junior's budget, as the bodies are not smothered in overburden like their larger cousins at FalCon in Saskatchewan. Although the waste material atop parts of the Buffalo Hills pipes does reach 100 metres in places -- notably at the small but high-grade K252 pipe, at the two most intriguing pipes, K6 and K14, there are kimberlite outcrops.

K6 is not easily summarized, however, as while its northern lobe outcrops in places and is covered by a few to 13 metres of overburden elsewhere, the southern lobe lies beneath about 80 metres of waste. Further, the kimberlite within the southern lobe is diluted by embedded mudstone. The good news, however, is that the bulk of the kimberlite is modelled to occur within the northern and central areas, and nearly all the rock would be reachable through an open pit centred on the northern and central zone.

The discoverer of the Buffalo Hills kimberlites, Ashton Mining of Canada Inc., mini-bulk tested the K6 pipe 25 years ago, recovering 1.42 carats from 19.65 tonnes of kimberlite, about seven carats per hundred tonnes. Star Diamond and its 50-per-cent co-venturer at Buffalo Hills, Randy Turner's Canterra Minerals Corp. (CTM: $0.065), collected a much larger sample 10 years later, extracting 16.28 carats from 231.89 tonnes of kimberlite, again averaging seven carats per hundred tonnes.

Early on, K6 looked to be an unusually good provider of larger and perhaps valuable gems. Processing of Ashton's 1997 sample produced what the company applauded as a circular crystal, bright yellow, clear and transparent, and with no obvious inclusions. That 0.76-carat stone accounted for the bulk of Ashton's initial parcel, which suggested it was a fluke statistically, but the subsequent work by Star Diamond and Canterra shows otherwise.

In fact, Mr. Read and Mr. Mason tout the recovery of three other fancy yellow diamonds in the later, larger test completed by Star and Canterra. Further, he applauds the small K6 diamond parcel as having delivered two plus-one-carat diamonds that were each appraised at over $500 (U.S.) per carat. As well, there are signs that suggest the nearby K14 pipe may be larger, have a higher grade and may also have a worthwhile diamond value. All this, Mr. Read says is "an opportunity that we aim to explore," so stay tuned.

Peter Dasler's Canalaska Uranium Ltd. (CVV) closed unchanged at 34 cents on 184,000 shares. The company has a new president, Cory Belyk. He replaces Mr. Dasler, who stepped down from the role early this year. This is a promotion for Mr. Belyk, the company cheers, although he was already CEO. The now apparently chiefier CEO replaced Mr. Dasler as CEO in 2021, when Mr. Dasler, who founded the company 20 years ago as a uranium explorer in Northern Saskatchewan, began his slow-motion disappearing act.

Mr. Belyk is happy with the added workload, cheering that he welcomes the opportunity to expand his role at Canalaska "and to lead the company toward new uranium and nickel discoveries." The world is seeking more of the critical minerals needed to make a clean-energy future a reality, Mr. Belyk gushes adding that "Canalaska and its shareholders are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this future reality" thanks to what he calls an "exploration portfolio built on world-class uranium and nickel assets in Tier 1 jurisdictions, great project partnerships, and wonderful employees."

Canalaska had been applauding new assays this spring from West McArthur, its main uranium project in Northern Saskatchewan, and it has recently acquired the Mel nickel project in Manitoba. The company does not yet have a resource estimate for West McArthur, but Mel comes with a historical resource of nearly 5.3 million largely indicated tonnes grading 0.86 per cent nickel.

Blair Way's Patriot Battery Metals Inc. (PMET) fell 69 cents to $15.26 on 209,000 shares Monday on word that it has suspended its spring drill program at the Corvette lithium project in the James Bay district of Quebec because of the forest fire situation. Drilling will resume when the situation improves, the company says -- and remember, Patriot planned to carry on its program through the summer into the fall. In the meantime, there is still room for news, as assays from holes drilled last month are pending.

In mid-May, Mr. Way, president and CEO, was enthused with a 122.6-metre hit that averaged 1.89 per cent lithium oxide -- just one of several long intervals with noteworthy grades. At the time, he cheered his team as being "steadfast focused on final validation" of their CV5 geological model, promising an initial resource estimate for the project. Patriot recovered 24 cents today, closing at $15.50 on 83,000 shares.

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