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New Found Gold (TSXV: NFG; NYSE: NFGC) is expanding its drilling program to 400,000 metres at its 100%-owned Queensway project, 15 km west of Gander, Nfld. So far about 102,000 of the originally planned 200,000 metres have been completed.
Nine core rigs are operating on site, with a tenth to begin drilling in the first week of November. Two additional drills will be added later this year and two more in 2022, bringing the total to 14 diamond drill rigs. The program is fully funded, and application has been made for the increased program.
The additional rigs will allow stepout drilling at the Keats, Lotto and Golden Joint zones over a strike length of 2.6 km along the Appleton fault zone. These zones have returned solid assays including bonanza grades: 3.4 metres grading 88.53 g/t gold from Keats, 2.5 metres at 224.7 g/t gold from Lotto, and 5.3 metres at 430.2 g/t gold from Golden Joint.
Additional drilling will test high-grade targets at the Appleton and JBP faults along a 20-km strike length at Queensway North. The company has plans for the initial drilling of targets at Queensway South.
New Found will build a new 2,325-sq.-metre core shack with a budget of C$3 million at the project. There will be 27 offices plus 1,395 sq. metres of core processing space. It is scheduled to be complete in the first quarter of 2022. The core shack will have sufficient capacity to handle even more core should the drill program again be expanded.
(This article first appeared in the Canadian Mining Journal)
