Moose, I agree this news is very good as they continue to optimize feed for the news oxide mill. I have been hoping the tailings recoveries would be good enough on their own to run them directly through the mill because this frees the sulphide mill up to be re-started processing sulphides only. As the company stated in the press release these were the last round of full scale operational testing.

The conclusions from these tests are that:

1. tailings recovery is sufficient to allow more direct processing in the oxide mill at a rate of 400 tpd (presently about 110,000 tonnes of tailings available plus if memory serves there is about 400,000-500,000 tones of Hecla generated taile we now own.

2. best recoveries on gold pyrite con (over 90% of gold) are through roasting so the present approximate 14,000 tonnes of gold pyrite con will be processed by roasting and added as a suppliment to run of mine 500 tpd

3. should be able to re-start sulphide mill at the rate of 330 tpd producing saleable lead con, zinc con and 50 tpd of new gold pyrtie con to be roasted and processed in oxide mill

4. most of the mill feed in September is now from the higher grade stopes from the underground mines so the transition from development ore to run of mine ore from news stopes seems about complete. This higher grade feed alone will significantly increase dore production

It seems the oxide mill optimization process is about done and we can expect to see increased dore production for the next few months and it looks like September may yet be our first cashflow positive month.