Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Silver Hammer Mining (CSE: HAMR)(OTC: HAMRF) CEO Morgan Lekstrom on Hitting High-Grade Gold & Silver at Silver Strand & Preparing Drilling at Depth in 2022

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real, with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Silver Hammer Mining, Mr. Morgan Lekstrom. Morgan, how are you today?

Morgan Lekstrom: I'm great. Gerardo, how are you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well, thank you so much for asking and thank you so much for coming on.

Let's get right into it. You had some news yesterday that I don't think the market fully appreciated. Let me read the headline and then I'll ask you to provide a bit of context. The headline read:

"Silver Hammer Reports Phase One Drill Results and Confirms Significant Gold-Silver Mineralization Below Old Mine Workings at Silver Strand."

That headline, I thought, was well put, but I don't think that the market got it. I know we're in a tough silver environment right now, we both expect that to change. I would love for you to explain kind of the company's thesis going into this drill program and why the company feels that you actually exceeded the expectation coming into this test of that thesis that you've had all along in frankly, such a short amount of time, right?

Morgan Lekstrom: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thesis behind what we were looking at was Silver Strand had been a past producing mine and they mined 90 meters vertical into the mountain. They actually never mined, technically, below the lowest surface level, which is the access portal number three, which we use to rehabilitate and put a drill in. We were like, okay, let's let's test the theory that the mineralization continues below that level and let's drill it out. And we're like, well we know there's gold, we know there's silver, let's see what we get. We were elated to find that we were getting 25 meter wide zones of highly solidified quartz. We were getting 15 and a half meter zones carrying consistent gold of over a gram. These are all within 30 meters of surface. So we were getting 8.8 grams gold, 394 gram silver, multiple, multiple hits of multiple meters.

So, when you're trying to understand a mine that the old adage and something Lawrence Roulston told me a long time ago, near surface ore is worth much more than deep ore so you got to remember the mines in this area have gone down to 1,800 plus meters. They don't actually get silver rich until the 300 plus meter mark. We're 30 meters below surface, 30. So you want to start comparing to other companies just because we're drilling from an underground right now doesn't mean anything in the fact that we're only 30 meters below surface. That is an impressive number to get these grades. I've worked in mines all over the world, those numbers don't happen until deep, many, many hits at five grams a tonne gold five and a half grams of tonne gold, multiple 200 to 300 grams per tonne silver, you basically would be mining through gold to get the silver.

Gerardo Del Real: Agreed and look, let me read some of the highlight intercepts, right? There was one that was 4.57 meters of 89.76 grams per tonne silver. 1.13 grams per tonne gold again, as you mentioned, all of these are at very, very shallow depths. There was another intercept of 1.83 meters of 593.93 grams per tonne silver equivalent. Another one of 7.93 meters of 209.85 grams per tonne silver equivalent. The million dollar question, what comes next, Morgan?

Morgan Lekstrom: What comes next for us is, we proved the thesis now. We are, like I said, elated that all six of our drill holes, every single hole had gold and silver mineralization and very good. The next steps are we want to keep exploring, we want to understand the data and we want to go down to depth using that existing drill base, so that capital that we put in allows us to go back in there.

I just got off the phone with the forest service, they're happy. They're really happy with what we're doing. They are on board with us getting going again. So we have the ability now to explore at a very high return on investment. So going into that existing underground, we can go two to 300 meters deep now with that existing cutting. We can look at putting in more drill cutting. So there's so many things that can be done with that existing underground to prove this out. Plus, now that we're seeing this mineralization, having people like Ron Burk on… there's no way there's not other paralleling vein. Like it's very uncommon to see only one vein like this. So now we're, we're really excited to start looking for multiple paralleling veins as well. This thing could get big, fast.

Gerardo Del Real: You answered my next question, which was going to be that, you've recently strengthened the board. You mentioned that you've worked at mines all around the world. Ron, obviously his track record, it speaks for itself. My question was going to be how is the team feeling about being able to drill at depth, given the fact that you're getting these types of grades at again... we're talking, you're drilling down to 24 meters, 47 meters, 36 meters, 17 meters. So got to be excited to drill further.

Morgan Lekstrom: Oh, absolutely. The whole team is excited. We were digesting the data and we got the assay results and we're like, "oh, Hey, we hit it. Hey, there's gold. Hey, there's silver there."

If you look at the charts and the press release, you can see, as we started to go down the actual grade, the silver got better. We had 392 grams, we had 284 grams as we started to get lower. We actually expanded the area. So when people like Ron Burk get excited on the phone and Lawrence Roulston gets excited on the phone, it excites me as the leader of the company and then the team. I look at it going; okay, we now have a gold-silver system here. We have a 5.5 kilometer land package and strike. There are many opportunities to explore and drill out a lot more anomalies on surface, and also continue with that underground method, because that allows us to explore much quicker from a permitting standpoint, as well as an ROI standpoint.

We have very great contacts in the Coeur d’Alene District that finished this work under budget, ahead of schedule and I'm looking to do that again and again.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. What's the treasury look like?

Morgan Lekstrom: Treasury stands really great actually. Our last financials were $2.8. We are bringing in about 400 grand a month during our drilling three to 400 grand a month.

We've stopped, obviously, now and we are set really well to continue with the programs in 2022, but also noting that warrants have started to come in. So there's a level of self-funding that's been happening

Gerardo Del Real: An excellent way to end 2021. I'm excited for 2022. I'm looking forward to seeing you and the team methodically drill this project out. Morgan, thank you for your time. Anything to add to that?

Morgan Lekstrom: No, you said it really well. One thing we look forward to as a company is advancing Silver Strand and getting that down to depth and proving the multiple veins and large potential resources there, that multi-hundred million ounce resource that we think could be there. But also to remind your listeners, we have two other potential tier one projects in the pipeline as well that we're going to be looking at doing work on. I think we're highly undervalued as a company, being that we're new, and we have some high potential projects.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to 2022. Enjoy the holidays, Morgan. Thanks again.

Morgan Lekstrom: Thank you very much.