I don't want to get drawn into what Mihalop & Wrathall are like, and rating the whole prospect on that. Some pretty dodgy people have found some pretty big mines in the past. And I've never met either of them anyway. All I will say is, there has to be a balance - you have to have some flair, as well as some substance and knowledge. It's no use being boring, honest or pessimistic, in the game they're in - or you won't get any funding - so you won't be able to drill anything, and then you most certainly won't find anything!
Some of the greatest mineral deposit discoveries in the world, of the past 25 years (Oyu Tolgoi, Voiseys Bay, Kamoa-Kakula) have been discovered by teams led by a financier called Bob Friedland, who is a complete nutter and almost certainly more of a salesman than a geologist. Of course it was wildly speculative, but if he didn't pull the $$$ in, they wouldn't have found anything, and thats all there is to it.
I have to say though - I don't understand what CLi are doing at all, I don't doubt for a second that water containing lithium exists in geothermal brines in various area of Cornwall, but I don't understand what processes they could use to economically recover such low concentrations of lithium. Again, I dont doubt its technically possible, but I've got no reason to suppose its economically viable either now or foreseeably. If there is much substance behind the proposition, they aren't very forthcoming about it. So I agree with you on CLi, and we'll leave that there.
But that's by the by. One way or another, they've accidentally intersected a significant amount of copper, at a relatively shallow depth - and that doesn't belong to them, it belongs to Strongbow Exploration, ie. the owners of the long ailing South Crofty. And what I do know is enough 7% copper is economically viable.
So... on the substantive matter... has it been cut before... the first significant thing is... they've intersected 15m of mineralised drill core. Not 15 metres of void. It'd be nice to see some pictures and core logs to prove that, unusual not to post that in the Press Release, to be honest. But thats the first indication that maybe the old men didn't know about this mineralisation, because they wouldn't have left 7.5% copper behind. That would have been a reasonable grade, even for Consols/United.
I get what you're saying, there are a lot of very old pre-survey workings from the early 18th century, maybe even before - in the area. But to cut a decent grade of copper you might need to be a bit below surface, it could be possible to miss from just trenching. It might have a surface expression as < 1% tin (and if its fine tin like Wheal Jane, then recovered black tin could be very low) so wouldn't have necessarily been of much interest.
As for the crosscut drives south from Consols at 40F, and the deeper drives north from United - are they not all already on the plan in grey?
https://www.strongbowexploration.com/site/assets/files/5332/2020-04-07_united_downs_mineral_rights_held_by_strongbow.jpg Are they not also in this 3D model? (see 2:30)
https://www.facebook.com/407369656071364/videos/1052482168226773/ There simply doesn't seem to be any deeper driveages from Consols through all the way to United on any of the plans I've seen. And you can project on this structure at a northerly dip, and it somehow misses everything, including the Wheal Maid decline. It's threading an eye through a needle, it seems highly improbable. But prove its impossible? Did they not do any diamond drilling south from the Wheal Maid decline?
https://i.imgur.com/pFbKiuP.png Yes, it would mean Wheal Maid decline stopped short by maybe 50m, and both Consols and United missed it by even less. But who knows, maybe they did...
Besides, if they start doing anything up there, they are going to need an awful lot of large steam engines.
I think you'll find a few electric pumps will do the job with no problem. The main issue would be water treatment. Is Wheal Maid decline hydrologically linked to Consols or United? What level does the County Adit drain United to?
Finally I would concur with what you've said about Redmoor. Seems like a very professional team there, and they've found what seems to be quite a lot of decent width very high grade tungsten mineralisation, especially where the sheeted vein nears the granite-killas contact there. A lot of potential there, some reasonable tin to the west as well but its mainly tungsten. But the parent company has run out of money, so perhaps they do need to be a bit more bullish about the prospects there... no drilling = no progress = no mining.
As for Wheal Concord (80s), they spent a bit of money digging holes, but they didn't find very much of any significance. I doubt they ever sampled any 7% copper and 1.2% tin over 14 metres anyway. Swashbuckling maybe, but I don't think its a very good model for what commercially successful mineral exploration looks like.