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Showing results for tags 'fossil prep'.
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I am looking for input on what type of microscope I should get for prepping fossils like trilobites, ammonites from Montana, and other fossils from the Midwest. What magnification I would need. Any suggestions would help me decide. I mainly use air scribes but have done some cleaning with picks.
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- fossil prep
- microscope
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I am looking for something like rewoquat or a good substitute sold in the US, for breaking down shale and such?
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- anything like rewoquat sold in the us?
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Hi everyone, firstly I'll apologize for the poor quality pictures. These Fossil are tiny and it's hard to get a good exposure. These things which are in all the shale I brought back are like rounded objects. They will come out leaving the impression behind. One is 1/8th in and another is about half of that. If any one can help, I'd love to know. On the paper they gave us showing what we can find, there are brachiopods but these seem to all and not the right shape. paper has something called pyilocardia or something like that. Thank you
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- micro fossil
- fossil prep
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Hello everyone! Im just wondering if anyone has any tips on cracking a nodule open? Me and my geology hammer have taken a good whack at around the edges but all I’m getting is chipping and no splitting. My first time with a nodule. I found it on a trip to Lyme Regis. I’ve posted a picture of one of the chips with a few ammonites showing themselves. thanks for reading! Ryan
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- stellar nodule
- fossil prep
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Hello, Has anyone used a digital microscope (such as Dino-lite) in real time for fossil prep??
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- digital microscope
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Hey everyone! Sorry it has been so long since I last posted. I have been so busy with school, family life, and lots of technical problems. But I finally was able to finish my video and I am so excited to share my work with all of you! This video is about my latest fossil cleaning, It is my favorite trilobite to date! It is actually a complete body fossil, not just a shell, or a piece of one. I did learn a few new things this time. I had some trouble with this one because the air scribe I have is not not suited for microscopic fossils, which is what I am cleaning up. Because of this I ended up damaging my fossil. A technique I am trying is to find the edges of the fossil and clean them out before I clean out the middle of the fossil. I am doing this because the air abrasive is basically a s sand paper in air form. The top of this trilobite is quite detailed, if I cleaned up the detailed section first it would leave it open to be hit by unintentional air abrasive and thus damaging it. So I left the top to be done last. This seemed to work well. Which is pleasing. Watch and see how it all turned out!
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Hello everyone! So i have been hard at work. Last time I damaged a couple of fossils because the PSI on the sandblasting machine was too high while I was working on removing matrix directly off the fossil. This time I learned that higher pressures like 20 or 40 PSI can be useful for removing large amounts of matrix that are not directly touching the fossil. While lower pressures like 5 PSI are useful for removing small amounts of matrix to expose details of fossils. Also it is a good idea to wait to expose details until the entire fossil is mostly exposed and only detail work remains. This is because the more a fossil is exposed and being worked on the higher chances are that details will be erased by the air abrasive moving over the fossil. Even in areas you are not directly working on. Please watch my video and learn more about it! Special thanks to the University of Utah for letting me use their lab, and a special thanks to the University of Utah Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program for helping too!
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Hey guys! So I thought that I would start a new blog here. I have been looking for videos and other instructional material on line for how to prep / clean a fossil and have not found much. Google did not seem to be to helpful in this matter. I did find a few more things on this forum and they were very helpful. I learned what materials I needed and some techniques of how to clean fossils, but nothing like "Make sure to do this.....", "don't do this....". So I was able to gain access to my School's Palio and geoscience lab, and we put together a fossil prep lab. Now it may not be as fancy as a museum but it works!! And I am excited to work there! I may also be able to go to a nearby museum and be trained in how to do this as well. We will see. So I have some trilobites from the wheeler shale formation, in Dugway Utah, that I will be practicing on. The point of this is to get my skills high enough to be able to work on other fossils with out damaging them, for a research project I am involved in. In the video I show you what I do and talk about why and also talk about what I do wrong and how I fixed them. Please feel free to talk about this and to give advice. Here is a video of what I have been able to do so far. I started a youtube channel so that everyone can see what I am doing. So far I found that if i put a circled groove around the fossil, hopefully deep enough, that when I break the parallel layers of shale below the fossil that it will let the fossil be removed, with some matrix, from the rock. I will then later remove the excess rock off the fossil with an air abrasive / sandblasting machine. After I put the circled groove around my trilobite fossil I put my finger on it so that way it does not fly away when I use the air pen to pop it out. I had some success with this. I also found that keeping the PSI on the sand blasting machine around 5 PSI was necessary. Anything higher then that and I was damaging the fossils I found this out the hard way. I damaged two fossil because I did not check the PSI on the machine before I started. Fortunately they are ones that I own and not some one else. Best check that PSI next time!! Well enjoy my video! and remember please share this with others who are interested in getting started. And feel free to give any advice I would need for a beginner! Zach
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- Fossil Preparation
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From the album: Marjum Formation
Here is the equipment I use for working on my fossils.© ©2016 Zach Case