Opened mazon creek nodule

[GallinaPinta]

Hey, i just opened a mazon creek nodule with my hammer with a few light taps (since a month going in and out the freezer didnt seem to work) and i found these balls inside. Are they the actual fossil or are the specimens inside the ball? Any answer is appreciated! 

[connorp]

That is just the outer layer of the concretion coming off. It is pretty common, many concretions have several layers flake off before they actually split.

 

What process are you doing in the freezer?

[stats]

1 hour ago, GallinaPinta said:

Hey, i just opened a mazon creek nodule with my hammer with a few light taps (since a month going in and out the freezer didnt seem to work) and i found these balls inside. Are they the actual fossil or are the specimens inside the ball? Any answer is appreciated! 

  

Keep going... and be patient.  Sometimes it takes a long time.  I have a horseshoe crab that took a few years of cycling in and out.  Like concorp said, outer layers might come off.  What is your process?  If you dry them in the sun once in a while, it can speed things up.

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

[GallinaPinta]

40 minutes ago, connorp said:

That is just the outer layer of the concretion coming off. It is pretty common, many concretions have several layers flake off before they actually split.

 

What process are you doing in the freezer?

 

16 minutes ago, stats said:

Keep going... and be patient.  Sometimes it takes a long time.  I have a horseshoe crab that took a few years of cycling in and out.  Like concorp said, outer layers might come off.  What is your process?  If you dry them in the sun once in a while, it can speed things up.

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

My process is leaving them completely submerged in a bowl of water for a week, then putting them in the freezer for a week, take them out, leave them out in the kitchen for a day and then repeat the cycle. Its driving me crazy

[GallinaPinta]

Anything i could do to speed things up? Without whipping out my hammer of course lol

[deutscheben]

You can accelerate the process by pulling them out as soon as they are completely frozen- it shouldn't take a week for the water to freeze all the way. That way you can get more cycles of freezing and thawing in- I usually leave mine in for 48 hours, but it will depend on the size and depth of your containers. 

[stats]

1 hour ago, deutscheben said:

You can accelerate the process by pulling them out as soon as they are completely frozen- it shouldn't take a week for the water to freeze all the way. That way you can get more cycles of freezing and thawing in- I usually leave mine in for 48 hours, but it will depend on the size and depth of your containers. 

48 hours should be good.  I usually cycle through my 18 containers twice a week, 5 or 6 at a time.  3 days to get through one cycle.  Some I thaw more often, usually smaller concretions in smaller containers.  Occasionally, dry them in the sun.  That can speed things up.

 

Cheers,

Rich

[connorp]

1 hour ago, stats said:

Occasionally, dry them in the sun.  That can speed things up.

Why is this the case?

[GallinaPinta]

7 hours ago, deutscheben said:

You can accelerate the process by pulling them out as soon as they are completely frozen- it shouldn't take a week for the water to freeze all the way. That way you can get more cycles of freezing and thawing in- I usually leave mine in for 48 hours, but it will depend on the size and depth of your containers. 

 

6 hours ago, stats said:

48 hours should be good.  I usually cycle through my 18 containers twice a week, 5 or 6 at a time.  3 days to get through one cycle.  Some I thaw more often, usually smaller concretions in smaller containers.  Occasionally, dry them in the sun.  That can speed things up.

 

Cheers,

Rich

So should I leave them in the water soaking for a week or should 3-4 days be enough for a proper soak? Also, should i leave them thawing in the sun instead of the kitchen? Or is the sun drying done only occasionally? Thanks in advance 

[stats]

7 hours ago, connorp said:

Why is this the case?

It just helps to shrink the concretion, which might pop them open.  During the summer, some people process concretions by soaking them a couple days and then drying them in the sun.  I know of a few old timers that even boil them.

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

[stats]

2 hours ago, GallinaPinta said:

 

So should I leave them in the water soaking for a week or should 3-4 days be enough for a proper soak? Also, should i leave them thawing in the sun instead of the kitchen? Or is the sun drying done only occasionally? Thanks in advance 

Thaw them in the sun.  That has worked well for me in the summer time.  It's winter here now, so I thaw them inside.  A good soak to start is fine.  After that, only re-soak them if you've dried them out.  The soaking is to get the water deeper into the concretion.  Otherwise, you are only operating on the surface.

 

Cheers,

Rich

[Mark Kmiecik]

On 1/4/2020 at 9:16 PM, GallinaPinta said:

 

My process is leaving them completely submerged in a bowl of water for a week, then putting them in the freezer for a week, take them out, leave them out in the kitchen for a day and then repeat the cycle. Its driving me crazy

You're doing it correctly. Definitely let them soak for at least a week before freezing. Have patience. The results are worth it. Many times the outer shell of the concretion will stay on it even when it splits. That's the "halo" you see on some of them around the edge. Sometimes the outer shell coming off separately is an indication that water did not soak all the way into the center of the concretion. Get plastic trays with covers and leave the concretions at least partially sitting in water or completely submerged. Freezers nowadays have fans to keep the inside of the freezer from icing up. These fans will dry out your concretions at least partially before they freeze. You must keep them wet. Remember, you have to get the water into the center so the expansion of ice as the water freezes can push the halves apart. Pushing from the outside towards the center tends to make it crumble rather than split. The finer the grain, the longer it takes the water to soak in and the more cycles it takes for them to open, but it's worth the wait because the finer grain tends to yield the best-preserved specimens. Looking at the grain of the two in the photos, I would say soak for 8 to 10 days, 48 hours in the freezer, 24 hours out, and it should split in 6 to 9 cycles max, possibly as soon as one or two. A week in the freezer isn't necessary; additional time does nothing. They are ready to thaw as soon as they freeze all the way through. Check the edges of all the concretions for cracks after each cycle or two (keeping them wetted as you check) and if you find any let them dry completely before lightly tapping with a hammer. You can heat them in the oven to speed up the drying at 200 degrees for about 2 to 5 hours, depending on the size of the concretion. The size of those in your photos is at the 2-hour end of the scale or less. A concretion that's 14 inches long, 5 inches wide and two inches thick would be at the upper end of that scale. It would also need to be soaked for at least two to three weeks before freezing. Remember that if you dry one out to try tapping it open and it doesn't open, you are starting at the beginning again as far as soaking it goes. Do not heat at temperatures above 200 degrees or heat them in the microwave -- you will create steam inside the concretion and it will blow up, literally. Also, the IRON siderite is the same as putting an iron pot in the microwave. It will ruin your microwave oven just like putting any metal in it would. It will take twice as long but in the end you'll need a new microwave oven. You can thaw them by running hot water over them. Don't let the anticipation drive you crazy. This is just like anything else -- if you force it you'll screw it up. Take the scientific, methodical approach and your "luck" will improve significantly. Also, be aware that some of the duds are only duds because they didn't split in the plane where the fossil lies. I have epoxied them back together in the past and refrozen with good results, in the vicinity of maybe five percent rate of success. Whether you do it inside or outside, in the dark basement or out in the sunlight doesn't matter and makes no difference. The only things that count are soaking all the way through and getting them cold enough to freeze all the way through. Everything else is superfluous. If you could get them to freeze and thaw every two minutes you could open 99 percent of them in two hours. If you can do it every three days it takes 90 days to do the same job, assuming you don't miss any days. If you leave them outside in a bucket of water all winter they will completely freeze and thaw about three to six times each year depending on how drastically the weather changes and for how long. You'll get the same results in 1/10 of the time using a freezer.

 

Sorry about getting so long-winded, but learning the finer points by trial and error leads to a lot of ruined specimens. If I can help you save just one, I've done my job.

[bigred97]

Excellent points above from some real experts. My process has been to soak about a week before freezing them. When I have a bunch of concretions and I won't get to some for awhile, I keep them in a bucket of water in the basement, that way when I need more I know they will  have been sitting in there for a few weeks (I just have to be careful to change the water occasionally or it might start getting stale or growing mold).

I have 2 shelves on our freezer for concretions. Each morning I take out what was frozen the day before and leave them to thaw. By that evening they are usually ready to go through to see if any split. When I take the ones out of the freezer in the morning, I replace them with the ones I took out and thawed the day before. That way I have 2 sets of containers and they all are freeze/thawed every other day. If I don't skip a day, I know they have gone through about 15 cycles in a month. I've heard you might have to wait 30 or even 40 cycles for them to split sometimes. And I have had splits that seemed to take that long. 

One problem I have is that as they split I tend to replace them with other concretions that have been waiting. So I am most of the time unsure if any one concretion has had say 50 cycles. The exception to that is when I start to run out of concretions. I keep them separate by where I find them (Creek, Pit 11, Braceville) and when there are no more waiting from a particular place, then I mark down the date and in a few months I can be pretty certain they have all gone through enough cycles and are unlikely to pop. Then I take the hammer out and give it one last method of persuasion to open.

I do dry them out as has been suggested, although it takes a lot of time to do that, so I probably only do it every couple of months. I should perhaps reevaluate that and do it a little more frequently. I also didn't realize that when you are done drying them out, you need to essentially start the soak cycle again. I should probably soak them longer than I do now, although I doubt you would then need another week. Usually after a couple hours of drying, if one does split, it is somewhat wet inside. So I wouldn't think I would need to re soak for that long. Although perhaps that means I'm not drying them long enough? 

I'm still learning!

 

 

[stats]

3 hours ago, bigred97 said:

I keep them separate by where I find them  (Creek, Pit 11, Braceville) I'm still learning!

I like that you keep them separate.  I am starting to go back an label mine using methods I learned here. I've ordered some latex paint and Paraloid B-72.  I have the locality.  The only thing I wish I did was keep better track of what year I collected the concretion.  For my best specimens, I do remember, but there are many I'm not sure.

 

Funny how we all seem to arrive at similar patterns to keep the cycle going.  I pretty much hunt for Mazon Creek fossils every evening in my basement!

 

Cheers,

Rich

[TheRocksWillShoutHisGlory]

I wouldn't recommend boiling them.  I tried that once and had a bunch of my rocks crack apart since water got in places that weren't the fossil plane.  Maybe it would have been better with larger nodules or ones with a finer grain.

 

 

[Mark Kmiecik]

The number of cycles it takes will vary depend on a few different factors. The "soft" ones take up to 25; the "hard" ones up to 75 cycles. With experience you can tell which type it is by looking at it and handling it. The "soft" ones I hammered at 50, the "hard" ones at 75 cycles.  75 cycles can take a year or more, depending how much your work and your life interfere with your fossil addiction.

 

Boiling is something that I also tried. It doesn't work well alone or in combination with other techniques, and concretion size, shape or grain don't matter. I've tried, believing there has to be a better way. Well, there is a better way. It was developed 100 years ago and that's why we still use it.