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Took some time to be done, but it was more about alot of small operations, than endless hours of pneumatic pen. All in all, the more time spent was with the dremel polishing the matrix. Before : Only operation before the picture was an emergency glueing on the field. Some time it s better to do this on the field, sometimes you better packed the different part of the puzzle home, clean them and glue them home. This time it was on the field. Then a bit of small chisel and a bit of pneumatic pen. Then a lot of dremel that will give the grey aspect to the matrix Then a bit of scalpel to remove a bit of matrix from the caudal spine. Then a bit of cutter to save one of the eodal' eyes from the counterpart. Then a bit of glue to set the said eye. And here we are :

My guide for the best fossil consolidant and adhesive resources. Please let me know if you find any better ones to add to the list. "Understanding and Use of Adhesives" by Amy Davidson, (AMNH), series of videos by Association for Materials & Methods in Paleontology LINK Davidson, A. and S. Alderson. 2009. An introduction to solution and reaction adhesives for fossil preparation. In: Methods In Fossil Preparation: Proceedings of the First Annual Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium, pp 53-62. Brown, M.A., Kane, J.F., and Parker, W.G. Eds. LINK Davidson, A. and G. Brown, 2012. ParaloidTM B-72: Practical Tips for the Vertebrate Fossil Preparator. 2012 Collection Forum 26 (1-2): 99-119. LINK Where to buy consolidants/adhesives: LINK

Hey gang....I'm trying to find a source for the inexpensive white folding specimen boxes. They start out as a flat cross shape and fold to about an inch deep by whatever size....I'm looking for several sizes, from about 2 inches square to 4 inches. Anyone have a good source? Thanks in advance!

I am wanting to start preparing some fossils. However, I only want cheap tools, so I'm not really looking for any of the air pens or other expensive tools. Are there any hand tools you would recommend for under £35? Also, I'm looking for somewhere to buy some unprepared fossils I could practice on - any suggestions would be appreciated.

Back at the end of June at our spot in the Thedford area a small group of us were busy making benches and unlocking slabs from the Widder Formation. Once we got to splitting, one lucky split resulted in finding three Greenops widderensis on a single plate. With flying genal spines and lappets on an already delicate and thin-skinned species, it was nothing short of miraculous that I was able to get it to the car with no damage. Right away I applied cyanoacrylate, and then it started to rain. This is how it looked in the field:

UPDATE: Consolidated all my loose preparation threads into one topic. Four hours so far into this big bug, and maybe another two to go. Found at Penn Dixie this past weekend, the visible area measures 6 cm. With the pygidium, it likely measured about 8+ cm. Judging by its size and pustular sculpture, this was likely a long-lived specimen prior to burial. This is how it looked fresh in the field:

Hello, everyone! Here is another preparation sequence. This is a Lower Cretaceous (Aptian) piece containing ammonites Acanthoplites nolani Seunes, 1887, Diadochoceras nodosocostatum D'Orbigny, 1841 and small Euphylloceras sp. from the North Caucasus of Russia (Krasnodar region, bank of the river Hokodz).

Hi folks! I got some douvilleiceras that I want to clean up a bit. Ive let them soak in water and then i used a toothbrush and tried to scrape off some of it. It made a minor difference, its like hard clay but not the easiest to get rid off. Do you have any advice what I could do without the risk of damaging the specimens? I do not have any special tools/machines, Just a dremel tool and a engraver.

I need some advice for consolidating these 3 fossils. #1 The Enchodus fang/jaw itself is fine, however the sandy matrix Is the issue, especially because it’s messy for display because tiny grains keep falling off, etc. What would you reccomend for consolidating that?

About a month ago I went to Penn with two fossil buddies and they both found prone greenops. Sadly I did not find one. However both of these greenops were split between the positive and negative and probably were missing some skin as the material was quite flaky. For one of my friends this was his first ever find of a prone greenops. Prone greenops that are nicely laid out are a very rare find in the Windom shale. Most of the ones I have found from there or others that I have prepped for people are fully, partially enrolled or distorted. So to my fossil buddy this was a bit of a special find. We wrapped up the two pieces in tin foil in the field and I agreed to take it with me and prep it for him. Well zoom ahead a month in time and I am going out with him last week to collect and he asks how is his greenops coming, whereby I realize that I have not only not started it ,but in my senility had forgotten I had it and had no clue where it was. Well when I got home it turns out that I had never unpacked the bucket of fossils from that trip and low and behold his fossil was packed just as we had left it. A careful look at both parts under the scope confirmed my opinion that the bug was in pretty rough shape , but a prone greenops, not to mention perhaps his first ever prone warranted we attempt to bring it back to life. Unfortunately I did not take any pics until a ways into the prep but here is what I did to start. 1. Washed the mud off both plates scrubbing with a tooth brush 2. Squared up what would become the fossil plate with the diamond gas saw 3. Cut out as small as possible a square from the top piece of the matrix that contained the top part of the greenops using my 7 inch tile saw with diamond blade 4. On a belt sander using aluminum oxide 120 grit thinned the top piece as much as safely possible to help minimize my prep time later. 5. Using super thin cyanoacrylate glue reattached the top portion to the main slab clamping tightly with a c-clamp. Asusual all prep was done under a zoom scope at 10x to 20x magnification using a Comco abrasion unit and in this case a German Pferd MST 31 scribe exclusively.. Not a lot of scribing was done other than to outline the bug as the skin was not in great shape. Abrasion was pretty much done with a .18 and .10 nozzle using 40 micron previously used dolomite at 30 PSI. Here is the bug after about an our of prepping . I have outlined in red where you can still see the outline of the section that was glued down. A lot of people do not realize that many of the fantastic trilobites you see on the market have actually been glued back together because the splits are often through the bug. I once did a Moroccan trilobite that was in 7 pieces when I received it Here is the bug after another 40 minutes Took some pictures of the prep but frankly they ended up too blurry to use so here is the prep after abrasion is complete and after I have repaired a lot of the parts that broke of in the split. I tend to use a white repair material and always take a picture to let the owner know what has been repaired Here is the bug after coloration applied . The repairs were allowed to cure overnight before coloration and a bit of extra carving to clean up spots.Just waiting for me to do a final cleanup tomorrow after everything has cured a bit more. A long way from being the worlds most pristine or perfect bug but I am relatively pleased that we were able to breath some new life into an ailing bug. Totally prep time about 3 1/2 hours over 4 days. I suspect the owner will be pleased with the result. I have seen people toss bugs in the field that were in this type of shape. For those of you who just need to know the bug is 27mm x 18 mm A slightly different view

It was a pretty good week fossil collecting I managed to make it to Penn Dixie Tuesday and Friday. A few of us Canadians had the place to ourselves both days Tuesday was an interesting day, three of us went Mike, Greg and myself and we all ended up with heat stroke. The temperature topped out at 39 Celsius and then you add in the humidity factor and it was low 40's. Stupid weather for collecting but we all found some very good stuff. Greg found a huge plate that I cut down in the field for him to about 12 inches by 12 inches. It would appear to have 4 complete prone E. rana on it . It currently sits in my basement waiting to be prepped. I do not have a picture as of yet but if I get his permission I will post one. Mike as usual is the greenops whisperer and he found 2 or 3 relatively complete and large greenops at the top of the blocks in the main Penn trilobite layer. I was having a reasonable day I probably had 20 to 30 enrolled or partially enrolled trilobites in the bucket along with a very nice Pleurodictyum americanum (a tabulate coral) . I only find a few of these each year at Penn and always take them home because they prep up quite nicely. I was getting a bit frustrated that both Mike and Greg were finding prone rana's including Greg's spectacular plate, when my fortunes changed with one split of the rock. For those of you that have been collecting with me you know that my style is to spend the morning breaking out huge blocks from the main trilobite layer with big prybars, wedges and chisels and then I split for the whole afternoon. We were working a large bench and had gotten to the state where all the blocks were locked in because of convoluted dome structures and the lack of natural cracks. The blocks that day were coming out about 200 to 300 pounds and about 12 to 18 inches thick. Eventually I would resort to the diamond gas saw and create some weak areas that we could exploit, but back to this story. In frustration with the heat and three guys not being able to get the next block out I just took a chisel and a 5 pound mini sledge and took my frustration out on the rock. Well to my pleasant surprise off popped a piece of matrix that clearly had 2 nice bugs in it. Wow one strike of the sledge and the fortunes of the day are totally changed. I always tell people who are collecting with me to keep at it, your are only one strike of the hammer away from having an amazing day. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures in the field my phone would not let me it said the battery was over heated. Here is ta picture of the shard about 1/2 hour into prepping. What you cant notice in this picture is that there is a 3rd bug buried to the left, I was just able to see the edge of a pygidium from the side. For once I got lucky and it was not just an isolated pygidium. Here it is probably an hour into the prep Prep was pretty standard using a COMCO air abrasion unit at about 30 PSI with 40 micron previously used dolomite, utilizing .025. .015 and .010 tips. Very little scribing was used on the piece because was quite thin and looked to have weak spots that were stabilized with cyanoacrylate and dilute vinac in acetone .Anyway for your viewing pleasure here is a series of pictures of the completed bugs. The plate has no repairs or restoration and the bugs are lying in their original positions. Going into my collection besides the "Perfect Bug" I found earlier this season.

It’s been a long time since I posted here. So here’s a thanks to everybody that’s helped me out in the past on here. It’s seriously appreciated. So. Here’s a lovely 6 inch Hildoceras I found recently at Kettleness, I’m the Yorkshire coast. She’s a beauty. A few of the outer whorl chambers are a little crush, but it just adds to the piece of think

There is only one way to do this. 1. Do it 2. Say sorry

Hello all, I think this question has been asked a lot here but It is still not 100% clear for me how to stabilise, glue and prep fossils. I've found some beautifel ammonites, a reptile tooth, trilobites... But every time I try to prep one it turns into a disaster after a couple of minutes. I have an air scribe and a lot of hand tools , but I am afraid of using them again since all of my tries turned out in the destruction of the fossil. Could someone give me hints on this? Greetings Thijs

I am often asked by people "Is this worth prepping?" The answer often is that it all depends. There is no guarantee that an unprepped specimen will be complete or that it will even prep out nicely. Some specimens are just to thin skinned or flakey or there really is little actual fossil there (mostly cast). It is my experience that prepping most common fossils will not increase the value of a specimen by as much as the prep will cost. If an average eldredgeops from New York costs about $20 to $50 to have prepped, depending on mostly the size, is it really worth prepping it when you can buy one for say $35 to $50 that is already prepped. A lot of the people I prep for it is the "first" of a species or the first prone trilobite that they ever found. So it is the associated value to them that makes the fossil worth prepping. I recently prepped a ceraurus for a US customer that was the first ceraurus he/she had found and was in their opinion the best trilobite they had ever found. Here is a picture of how it looked unprepped as I received it. It was obvious to me that there was a missing left genal spine and that the pygidial spines would likely not be complete. I relayed this information to the owner along with a preparation cost estimate of $60 to $100 US depending on how the bug responded to preparation and what if any repairs were needed. So the question is would I have paid that amount to have a bug prepped that would not be museum quality pristine when it was completed. For me the answer is likely not because I have quite a few pristine ceraurus already and although this one looked to be large and highly inflated it probably would not end up with a place in my display cabinet. So for me the answer was not that hard to come to. Equally for the owner of this bug it was an easy decision as it was in their opinion likely the best specimen if not the only specimen they were likely ever to find themselves as this one had taken countless years of collecting to find. Here is the bug about an hour into prepping. Very little scribe work was done as there was very little bulk matrix. All prep work is done under an Olympus zoom scope at 10 to 20x magnification. The initial air abrasion was done on a Comco MB1000 at 50 to 60 PSI using 40 micron dolomite with a .025 nozzle. An interesting and unexpected surprise was to find the hypostome still attached to the bug.. Given this knowledge in advance I would likely have prepped this for myself if it was mine as I do not have a ceraurus with hypostome intact. Now here is the almost completed bug. Final prep was done with a .015 nozzle at 30 PSI with 40 micron dolomite. A few small minor repairs can be seen in white which still need to be colour matched to the fossil . These were not burn throughs from over abrasion but actual defects in the fossil that I felt repairing would enhance the final aesthetics of the specimen. Remember this is going into a collection of an older amateur collecting enthusiast that has not found a lot of trilobites in their life. Note how highly inflated the specimen is By the way that is the pygidial spines from another ceraurus in front of the lip of the big bug. Now I am probably breaking a Peppers secret society rule by disclosing the cost for the prep. There is very little information on the internet regarding actual costs for having a fossil prepared. We seem to be like magicians not wanting to disclose our trade secrets. People are often surprised by how much it actually costs to get a fossil prepped. By the time you take electricity, supplies and wear and tear on the equipment (not to mention the original investment in the equipment) Preparators are lucky to get a minimum wage. My hats off to those who eke out a living this way. So what did it actually cost....... $80 US plus shipping ....... What s the bug worth.... well priceless to the owner. So here's the question.... would you have paid to have this bug prepped knowing what the costs was going to be.. Now gotta get back to matching the colour on those white spots.... Hate doing that worst part of the whole prep

Hi everyone, today i have finished preparing this little ammonit from Normandy. Does anyone know what ammonit is this? Before After

Forgive me if I'm being impatient or repeating myself--I'm new to this site and forum. I tried posting this under Questions and Answers a while ago and haven't seen it appear yet--maybe there's an approval process that has to run its course before a post appears publicly. In case I just didn't get it entered correctly I'll try again under this heading, which I didn't see at first. ANYWAY . . . . Does anyone have experience removing iron stains from St. Clair, Pennsylvania plant fossils? The white mineral that provides the striking contrast with the slate is pyrophyllite, a silicate. As an avid mineral collector (sorry, not too knowledgeable about fossils, even though I grew up in eastern Iowa--I decided I couldn't be an expert on both and settled on minerals) I am familiar with using Iron Out, Waller's solution, oxalic acid, etc. to remove iron oxide stains from mineral specimens. Can iron oxide stains be removed (or at least lightened) on St. Clair fossils by soaking in one of those reagents? They shouldn't affect the pyrophyllite chemically, but I can see how removing the iron oxide could disrupt the coating physically. I do not intend to scrub them--I'm sure that would do more harm than good. Any other suggestions? Thanks!

Looking for advise on a mosasaur jaw in sandstone. I’m wondering if I should do more prep to show more of the jaw still hidden in sandstone, the only problem is the jaw bone is fragmented. Any advise would help

I found the following multiblock during a recent trip to the Wutach valley which I described here a few days ago. There appear to be at least 3 ammonites on the one side, although there could be more buried under the matrix. I didn't notice until after I had extricated the block that there is also one large one on the reverse side...not quite complete, but certainly worth exposing as well. Let's see what happens. Here are both sides of the block in the raw. The first thing to do then, was to have a go at removing as much matrix as possible with the air pen without getting quite down to the shells, in order to try to ascertain the position and size of the ammonites and also to see if there were any more in there. The next photos show how far I had gone before I decided that it was time to put the air abrader into action. There was a lot of broken shell material in there, but no more ammonites. There were also a few sticky spots and I didn't want to take the chance of breaking into a shell with the stylus. It turned out that the matrix on the side with the large ammonite was soft enough to be removed quickly, but there were a lot of spots where it was pretty tough on the other side. I did however manage to remove enough soft matrix to get a good idea of where the ammonites lay. With the exception of the one at the bottom left, since it fell into the matrix at a relatively acute angle, although I was getting the feeling more and more that this was just a partial. There was also a larger partial just above it which could be causing problems.

Ok, so here's where I've gotten to & this will bring you up to date with what I've accomplished so far. First, I used a couple of different small stiff brushes and a very low impact tool that is similar to a Dremel tool. I cleaned a sand type of dirt, that fell away without much effort, in places in & around on the surface. About half way through the cleaning the piece started to make noises as if cracking. I mixed up a tube of Duco cement with a six oz. bottle of acetone. I decide to apply it generously to areas I'd already cleaned. I believe it was a good move as the sound has stopped. Also, it feels more sound when I pick it up. After I had applied the solution, I left it under a uv light to dry.So what do you think so far?

I have been wanting a Micro Jack for a while. If anyone has one that they don't use, I would be interested in buying or trading for it. If not I will probably order one from PaleoTools soon. Thanks!

Hi everyone, Last year I went on a one day fossil hunting trip to the Champagne region in France with a fossil hunting buddy of mine. We went to the well known locality of Fleury-la-Riviere, where Lutetian (Eocene) rocks are outcropping on the hillsides above the vineyards. We had a really good day, with lots of cool finds, among others a small but very nice Campanile giganteum. It was a lot of work to extract this gastropod in one piece, but it worked out nicely.

Here was a nice surprise. I picked up this fossil cluster of barnacles and noticed a nice layer of agate underneath! When I processed the photo I took of it, I saw that the light from my flash dispersed giving this rainbow effect. It's very small but now when I hold to the light I can see the little rainbows! I heard this process is called diffraction grating. I would like to polish the agate but I think the rainbows will go away once the material is flattened.

After prepping the big Stylemys that I recovered in Nebraska this summer, it seemed a shame to have spent all that time on the plastron only to have it sitting on a shelf out of view. So today I welded together a stand for it. I wanted the part upon which the tortoise rests to have as small a footprint as possible, because my idea was to use a mirror or mirrors to make the plastron visible to observers. Of course the angle of the mirror will depend on the height of the shelf where the tortoise is displayed. At just below eye level, this set up works reasonably well. If positioned below eye-level, this set-up works well (showing even more of the plastron).