Interpreting Gold Drilling Results?

Hi, I'm wondering if anybody out there good give us a quick run through of how to interpret the significance of figures that mining companies spout at us.

For example

20m @ 11.0g/t

I've got the g/t bit as grams per tonne so thats ok. But I dont really get the whole metres thing, and It'd be cool to know whats "hot" and whats "not" as far as these results are concerned.

My current opinion on these stats is just bigger is better, but I'm sure its more complex than that.

Cheers
-Caliente

IANAG (I am not a Geologist), but bigger isn't always better. There's a lot of reading to do on this as juniors are often guilty of showcasing big numbers amongst lots of geologist-babble to trick investors and traders.

First and foremost, finding high grades over large cross sections is quite rare. Quite often you'll find when a drill comes back with high grades, they've hit upon a small deposit that's uneconomic to mine. Also, be aware that unless the results is confirmed by a series of drills, it may have repoted a much larger strike than is actually there because gold tends to be on an upward plane and its likely they've not drilled through it at the perpendicular.;

There's a good little intro to understanding drill assays in the attached PDF on page 7-12.

Also depends on the whether the drill encountered the gold (or mineralisation)

If its close to surface where open pit mining is possible you could be profitable doing open cut mining from very low grades, but to me economic at depth (ie. from underground mining) then grades would have to be much higher to offset the higher costs of mining.

There is a good book on this topic called The Mining Valauation Handbook by Victor Rudenko 1st edition probably online for about $30-40, 2nd edition which is current probably around $60-70

Cheers - a BASIC guide can be obtained by going to http://www.goldreport.com.au and clicking on "free ebook" for now.

Its mainly just the process of how gold mining happens, from prospector to drilling, which is interesting in its own way.

thanks people very informative it is often hard to read some of the reports. They do make them sound so wonderfull sometimes i suppose if you wanted to keep the sp up then you would make it look as good as you can.