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I've been working on another commission assignment this past week which is pretty interesting, so I figured I'd show the progression here. It's been a somewhat time consuming project, having already spent 16 hours at it. The pen work and abrading is done now, but there's still some repair work to do with epoxy putty which I'll probably get down to tomorrow. This is what I got to begin with. As you can see, the customer had already trimmed off a lot of matrix and had also glued a couple of pieces back on which had broken off during extraction with the exception of the one loose piece to be seen sitting atop the block. The first thing to do was to determine the lay of the fossil and decide where best to get started. I decided to start on the side shown which had at least a few parts exposed, since the reverse side was still covered with a good few centimeters of matrix. I had to be careful around the edges with the break for fear of chipping off some of the shell. It worked out alright in the end, so I also trimmed off most of the matrix on the loose piece and glued it back into place. I then decided to do some abrading before I tackled the other side. And took a "wet look" photo of it when complete before going on. There are three large serpula nestling on the shell. I didn't think to take a photo of the original state, but here is one I took after I was about half way through trimming the reverse side. A few bits of shell had broken off the venter at the top, but I managed to get them glued back into place with no loss of substance. Here it is freed from the matrix before abrading. And here's another "wet look" pic after completion. This is a Fissilobiceras ovale from the Early Bajocian with a diameter of 20cm. I'll post a couple more photos once I'm done with the putty work.