by Will Purcell

Ellen Clements's New Nadina Explorations Ltd. has just wrapped up its drill program on the Monument property. The work produced one new kimberlite find and may have yielded a second discovery. The new holes give New Nadina and its partners, which include Dr. Chris Jennings and Dr. Stu Blusson, enough kimberlite to help flesh out the size distribution curves of at least one of their bodies.
The drilling

Ms. Clements said that New Nadina had two drills working on the property, but the equipment was available for just a few weeks. As a result, the company did not have a chance to drill all of its planned targets this summer. Nevertheless, the work resulted in the discovery of the Genie kimberlite, which lies near the company's String of Blue Pearls, a line of small but significantly diamondiferous kimberlites. Ms. Clements said the hole into Genie appeared to just nick the body, yielding a narrow intersection, but more tests would have to wait until next year.

Meanwhile, New Nadina's drillers encountered kimberlite at a second location. There remains uncertainty whether that new intercept represents a new body, or a more substantial hit on what Kennecott Canada Exploration Inc. called its DD-39 dike back in the mid-1990s. Ms. Clements said that the company has been unable to locate the data indicating precisely where Kennecott drilled its one hole into DD-39.

Some of the summer drilling took place at RIP, a body found in 2005 that initially appeared very small. Current indications suggest the body could have a surface area of nearly one-half hectare, and much of New Nadina's new kimberlite core samples come from the modest pipe.

Ms. Clements said that the partners had something approaching two tonnes of kimberlite to test, and much of that rock came from RIP, with the intercept near the DD-39 dike contributing a worthwhile amount of material as well. New Nadina expects to have its diamond counts before the end of the year, if all goes well. Expectations are high that all the intersections will yield promotable stone counts, based on earlier results. Those results will drive plans for next year.

The encouragement

The new hit near DD-39 appears intriguing. Kennecott came up with diamond counts roughly matching what it found in the best of the kimberlites elsewhere on the property. About 217 kilograms of material produced 39 diamonds larger than a 0.15-millimetre cut-off, and seven of the stones were longer than one-half millimetre. That worked out to nearly 200 stones per tonne and a macrodiamond ratio of about 0.22-to-1. At the best of the original finds, DD-17, Kennecott found a comparable diamond rate and a macrodiamond ratio of 0.4-to-1.

Ms. Clements is particularly enthused about RIP, short for "Rest in Peace," in memory of her partner, George Stewart. Last year, New Nadina recovered 198 diamonds from 385 kilograms of RIP kimberlite, including 85 larger than a 0.15-millimetre cut-off. That works out to 220 stones per tonne, matching the Kennecott bodies.

Five of the RIP diamonds remained on a 0.85-millimetre sieve, the cut-off typically used for a mini-bulk test. Those stones likely weighed roughly 0.07 carat, which offers encouragement that larger samples will support the company's expectation of worthwhile grades from not only RIP, but the other bodies lying along the String of Blue Pearls.

Earlier this year, the Monument partners produced 272 diamonds from 640 kilograms of kimberlite taken from DD-17. Seven stones, probably weighing close to 0.15 carat in all, sat on a 0.85-millimetre sieve. Those numbers support hopes for good counts from the new intersection near DD-39.

New Nadina closed up two cents to 19.5 cents Wednesday on 41,000 shares.