Western Star Resources Inc. has announced the results of a district-scale three-dimensional geophysical inversion across its Rowland and White Star tungsten properties in Elko County, Nevada. The modelling has defined buried and partially exposed intrusive bodies across the district and has refined the fault network that is interpreted to be involved in channelling mineralising fluid into the tungsten skarn system. Importantly, the Company’s highest-grade rock chips, 4.02% WO3 at Rowland and 3.00% WO3 at White Star, both correspond spatially with the contact between these modelled intrusive rocks and the carbonate host. The modelled intrusive framework extends well beyond the limits of the mapped outcrop, opening substantial new search space across both properties.
Blake Morgan, CEO and President of Western Star, stated “This is the result we were hoping for. The inversion has modelled intrusive bodies spatially associated with areas where we sampled high grade tungsten values, and it has mapped the faults that we believe carried the fluid there. That is the tungsten skarn recipe, and we can now see it in three dimensions across the whole district. Better still, the modelled intrusives are more extensive than has been previously mapped, which means the ground that has produced our best rock chips continues into untested areas. Soil geochemistry from Phase 2 is due back shortly and we can use these in our drill hole planning.”
The inversion was completed by Warren Hughes, P.Geo., of East Coast Consulting, a specialist in geophysical modelling and interpretation. The modelling defines buried and partially exposed intrusive bodies across the district. A causative intrusion is the essential ingredient of a tungsten skarn system, and the modelled intrusive framework extends well beyond the mapped outcrop. Approximately 25 kilometres of structure has been interpreted in two dominant orientations, north-east–south-west and north-west–south-east. These are interpreted as the fluid conduits that fed the skarn, and represent the first structural framework mapped at property scale in this district.
The modelled magnetic domains correspond closely with the units mapped by Coats (1964). The inversion adds depth and continuity to that mapping and will be used to refine the geological model in the next phase of work. The inversion resolves geology beneath the extensive Quaternary cover on the eastern flank of the district, providing an exploration vector into ground that cannot be mapped or sampled at surface.
Soil geochemistry from the Phase 2 programme is expected shortly and will be integrated with the inversion model, the structural framework and the geological mapping to define and rank drill targets. The updated geological & structural framework for the consolidated district is illustrated in Figure 1 (see here).
Tungsten skarns form where a granitic intrusion is emplaced into a carbonate sequence. As the intrusion cools it expels metal-bearing hydrothermal fluid, which reacts with the surrounding limestone to produce the garnet-rich calc-silicate rock known as skarn or tactite, and it is within that skarn that scheelite, the principal tungsten mineral, is deposited. Three elements must therefore be present together: an intrusion to drive the system, reactive carbonate rock to host the replacement, and structures to focus the fluid where it can do its work. The deposit model set out in the U.S. Geological Survey assessment of tungsten skarn resources across the Great Basin (Lederer and others, 2021) shows this arrangement clearly. Skarn develops both at depth along the flanks of the intrusion and at shallower levels where fluid has migrated out along faults and permeable horizons. Fault-channelled fluid is central to the model: it determines where the highest-grade skarn is developed (see Figure 2).
Both of the Company’s properties sit squarely within this model. Coats (1964) mapped a quartz monzonite intrusion, a Palaeozoic carbonate sequence and the skarn (tactite) developed at the contact between them, and the Company’s own field observations recognised this in the field where the high grade samples have been collected from.
The most important outcome of the inversion is the relationship it reveals between the modelled intrusive rocks and the Company’s existing rock-chip results. At Rowland, the sample that returned 4.02% WO3 sits directly on the mapped tactite where it abuts the modelled intrusive body. At White Star, the sample that returned 3.00% WO3 occupies the same position on the same contact on a separate instructive body. Both are within, or immediately adjacent to, interpreted structural corridors. The modelled intrusive extends considerably beyond the mapped outcrop, so that search space is now materially larger than the mapped geology alone would suggest (see Figures 3, 4, and 5).
The geological mapping of Coats (1964), published as U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1141-M, was detailed work and remains the authoritative geological base map for the district. The magnetic domains defined by the inversion correspond closely with the units Coats mapped, which gives the Company confidence in both datasets. What the inversion adds is the third dimension and continuity beneath cover. It shows how far the intrusive rocks extend at depth, where the intrusive–carbonate contact runs beneath the Quaternary landslide, moraine and outwash deposits that blanket much of the eastern flank of the district, and how the structural network cuts through both. The Company intends to use this to refine the mapped geology directly, through targeted field mapping in the next phase of work.
Soil geochemical results from the Company’s Phase 2 programme are expected shortly. These will be integrated with the three-dimensional inversion model, the interpreted structural framework and the geological mapping to build a single targeting model for the district. Follow-up field mapping and sampling will be undertaken to refine the geological model, and the resulting targets will be ranked to support the drill programme and the permitting process now underway.
Western Star is also pleased to announce that it has satisfied the first performance milestone under the option agreement for the Rowland tungsten project. Under the agreement with NorthEx Capital Partners Inc. and 1249445 BC Ltd., Milestone One required the Company to (i) increase the total project claim area by at least 30%, and (ii) identify at least three rock-chip samples grading above 2.0% WO3. Both conditions have been met well beyond the required thresholds. As previously announced, the Company expanded the Rowland claim package from the original ten unpatented claims (approximately 84 hectares) to its current 221-hectare footprint - an increase of approximately 165%. Rock-chip sampling reported in the Company's news release of July 28, 2026 returned four Rowland samples grading above 2.0% WO3: 4.02% (RO-16-01), 2.69% (RO-19-15), 2.56% (RO-19-10) and 2.11% WO3 (RO-16-02). The Company will issue 500,000 common shares to the vendors, valued at the 10-day volume-weighted average price immediately preceding the verification date, subject to the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange.
