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Huntonia's Amateur Prep Work


Huntonia

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Wonderful prep, I could see thousands of elrathia preps and not get bored. Its amazing that you can get that kind of transformation in only 8 minutes! One day I'll get a prep set up

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“If fossils are not "boggling" your mind then you are simply not doing it right” -Ken (digit)

"No fossil is garbage, it´s just not completely preserved” -Franz (FranzBernhard)

"With hammer in hand, the open horizon of time, and dear friends by my side, what can we not accomplish together?" -Kane (Kane)

"We are in a way conquering time, reuniting members of a long lost family" -Quincy (Opabinia Blues)

"I loved reading the trip reports, I loved the sharing, I loved the educational aspect, I loved the humor. It felt like home. It still does" -Mike (Pagurus)

“The best deal I ever got was getting accepted as a member on The Fossil Forum. Not only got an invaluable pool of knowledge, but gained a loving family as well.” -Doren (caldigger)

"it really is nice, to visit the oasis that is TFF" -Tim (fossildude19)

"Life's Good! -Adam (Tidgy's Dad)

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6 hours ago, Top Trilo said:

One day I'll get a prep set up

I look forward to seeing what you accomplish!

 

Here's a video you might like, a rather impressive prep of an Eldredgeops rana in just 10 minutes:

 

 

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Me too!  I purchased a mini sand blaster awhile back and have not used it.  After seeing your video, I think I'll finally give it a try!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I do love that video. It was one of the things that made me interested in prepping more seriously. I actually received my first airscribe the other day! I'm a bit hesitant to set it up as the outside humidity is about 90% and my garage isn't that much better :default_faint:

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've gotten to work trying out the paasche, still have a few kinks to work out but so far working nicely. Here's a partial flexi I chose as my first victim, this one took an awful long time clearing out those tight spaces

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I have some odd projects that I really ought to finish, but with one calymenid under my belt I'll be starting on a trio of C. breviceps soon. 

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8 hours ago, Huntonia said:

I've gotten to work trying out the paasche, still have a few kinks to work out but so far working nicely. Here's a partial flexi I chose as my first victim, this one took an awful long time clearing out those tight spaces

Wow you did a great job! I made a cast of one out of clay and it was very hard to get paint in those spaces, I was tempted to just dip it in paint. It must of been really hard working with an actual specimen. I look forward to your future preps.

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“If fossils are not "boggling" your mind then you are simply not doing it right” -Ken (digit)

"No fossil is garbage, it´s just not completely preserved” -Franz (FranzBernhard)

"With hammer in hand, the open horizon of time, and dear friends by my side, what can we not accomplish together?" -Kane (Kane)

"We are in a way conquering time, reuniting members of a long lost family" -Quincy (Opabinia Blues)

"I loved reading the trip reports, I loved the sharing, I loved the educational aspect, I loved the humor. It felt like home. It still does" -Mike (Pagurus)

“The best deal I ever got was getting accepted as a member on The Fossil Forum. Not only got an invaluable pool of knowledge, but gained a loving family as well.” -Doren (caldigger)

"it really is nice, to visit the oasis that is TFF" -Tim (fossildude19)

"Life's Good! -Adam (Tidgy's Dad)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Wow has it really been nearly a month since I posted here? How time flies. My hobbies have gotten away from me lately, lots going on and lots of stress to go with it! 

I realised I need to get back to some fun stuff to de-stress, finally set up my 8315B today. Got to work on an E. rana multi-plate that's way overdue for completion.

Here's how it looked a while back after some initial abrasion:

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Here's after tonight's session with the scribe:

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Bit hard to tell from the pictures but lots of progress made. Tomorrow I'll hopefully be able to start uncovering the buried segments. I had one heck of a time trying to figure out how these bugs continue into the rock! I circled in red the position of the next segment, as you can see it's about 10 degrees off from where I thought it would be. 

:fingerscrossed: fingers crossed it won't be a disarticulated mess underneath.

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Made a fair bit of progress with last night's prep session, bit of scribing and abrasive, and now I feel like I know what to expect to find. As expected the one bug is starting to look pretty disarticulated.

20210205_143441.thumb.jpg.70a22dd694f0f7e077c03e1b8a3894aa.jpg

My work was cut short last night as while I was working with the abrasive out of nowhere the glabella starting falling apart on the the trilo to the right! :unsure: I applied a liberal amount of super glue and I'll be taping that area for the remainder of the prep. The final step will be to dial the abrasive down to 5-10 PSI to clean up the excess glue. 

Lesson learned, even on seemingly stable fossils you can't go wrong with paraloid and tape. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nasty storm knocked out the power for a few days here, but everything's back now so I'm hoping to get some prepping done this week.

 

Tried out the scribe on a John Day piece and was able to mostly expose this nice metasequoia:

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And something on the left, not entirely sure what I'm looking at there. Maybe the stem of something?

 

Hopefully should be able to finish that E rana plate soon.

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2 minutes ago, Huntonia said:

And something on the left, not entirely sure what I'm looking at there. Maybe the stem of something?

Are you talking about blue or red? Either way looks really cool and very fossiliferous there's a fossil almost everywhere on the rock

image.png.bf874d708d6879c5c54d6dc17de715d4.png

“If fossils are not "boggling" your mind then you are simply not doing it right” -Ken (digit)

"No fossil is garbage, it´s just not completely preserved” -Franz (FranzBernhard)

"With hammer in hand, the open horizon of time, and dear friends by my side, what can we not accomplish together?" -Kane (Kane)

"We are in a way conquering time, reuniting members of a long lost family" -Quincy (Opabinia Blues)

"I loved reading the trip reports, I loved the sharing, I loved the educational aspect, I loved the humor. It felt like home. It still does" -Mike (Pagurus)

“The best deal I ever got was getting accepted as a member on The Fossil Forum. Not only got an invaluable pool of knowledge, but gained a loving family as well.” -Doren (caldigger)

"it really is nice, to visit the oasis that is TFF" -Tim (fossildude19)

"Life's Good! -Adam (Tidgy's Dad)

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1 hour ago, Top Trilo said:

Are you talking about blue or red? Either way looks really cool and very fossiliferous there's a fossil almost everywhere on the rock

I was referring to the plant you colored blue. The red is a faint metasequoia in which the carbon is missing leaving only the imprint.

It is quite an interesting matrix to work with, the fossils tend to be layered right on top of each other!

I have more of this matrix to work through in my spare time. Fingers crossed I'll find a hydranga :fingerscrossed:

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm inclined to call the E. Rana plate finished. At least for now. Few spots of matrix left in some tight spaces but with my current tools not much I can do about it. Had some hard spots in this one that the abrasive wouldn't do much but was in too much of a tight space to use the scribe. Spent a lot of time alternating between dental picks and the abrasive.

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Got a few segments exposed on this one but didn't want to go any further because the matrix is so thin

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I think this bug disintegrated, couldn't find any more segments except for the vertical one you can see the cross'section of.

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Looks like you are making real good progress in your prepping journey

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I agree you did very well even with a tough specimen

“If fossils are not "boggling" your mind then you are simply not doing it right” -Ken (digit)

"No fossil is garbage, it´s just not completely preserved” -Franz (FranzBernhard)

"With hammer in hand, the open horizon of time, and dear friends by my side, what can we not accomplish together?" -Kane (Kane)

"We are in a way conquering time, reuniting members of a long lost family" -Quincy (Opabinia Blues)

"I loved reading the trip reports, I loved the sharing, I loved the educational aspect, I loved the humor. It felt like home. It still does" -Mike (Pagurus)

“The best deal I ever got was getting accepted as a member on The Fossil Forum. Not only got an invaluable pool of knowledge, but gained a loving family as well.” -Doren (caldigger)

"it really is nice, to visit the oasis that is TFF" -Tim (fossildude19)

"Life's Good! -Adam (Tidgy's Dad)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got some work done on another small John Day plate today. Before:

20210319_192729.thumb.jpg.329ce416a9ba1eaf5c8fc9fdd38bd242.jpg

After:

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I'm having some issues with the scribe being a bit inconsistent and stalling/not starting. I'll try bumping up the pressure this evening and hopefully that will improve things.

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5 hours ago, Huntonia said:

I'm having some issues with the scribe being a bit inconsistent and stalling/not starting.

 

Have you drained the condense water out of your compressor lately and/or oiled your scribe?

 

Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger

http://www.steinkern.de/

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2 minutes ago, Ludwigia said:

 

Have you drained the condense water out of your compressor lately and/or oiled your scribe?

I did drain the water trap recently, seem to be doing fine on that front. I've also been lubricating the scribe regularly :)

 

I turned the pressure up 20 PSI and tried it again this evening. I was able to get it running and didn't have any issues with stalling! Sadly my little air compressor can't particularly keep up with that pressure. So I'll be sticking to abrasion this weekend and off to the hardware store to grab a proper 20 gallon on Monday. :dinothumb:

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Have you changed your spring and/or O-ring recently? I find that has been the culprit about half the time. Although the pressure was likely the issue this time, sometimes the stall is the canary in the coal mine to swap out the O-ring for a fresh one. :) 

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...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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What are you using to lubricate you can also try o-ring grease . Used very sparingly just at the o-ring it can make a big difference. Your scribe will probably run best at around  90 to 110 PSI and it needs a compressor able to supply a minimum of 2.0 CFM continuously

 

53182597_oringgrease.jpg.b6fc493f401534ab9af2a172bdae1c8d.jpg

 

 

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9 hours ago, Kane said:

Have you changed your spring and/or O-ring recently?

I haven't replaced anything since I purchased it, all in all I've probably only run it for 8 hours or so.

4 hours ago, Malcolmt said:

What are you using to lubricate

I've been using some silicone lubricant I had on hand for other air tools but I've been thinking to buy some of the recommended 9600 from all air products. 

 

My compressor gets 4.0 CFM at 90 PSI but it's a 10 gallon and the max pressure is 150 so at 110-120 PSI it runs almost constantly.

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I finished up a side project today, a bit of a delightful surprise. A while back I purchased this nice Acastella (I think) from the Silurian of Ukraine.

20210323_214922.thumb.jpg.e6120618ed89507a462abd4d2ea12c63.jpg

I noticed the surface of an eye sticking out the matrix at an odd angle. Expecting a molted librigena I started working on it with the abrasive. Imagine my surprise when I found this!

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A few more prep sessions and here's how it looks today

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A bit crushed but otherwise intact! I don't have the equipment to properly photograph it but the granular detail on this bug is better than anything I've prepped yet!

20210323_215406.thumb.jpg.c01fd6da403bc38631f0f00a02f3c3a2.jpg

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/12/2020 at 1:35 PM, Huntonia said:

Next I'll be working on an asaphiscus

Well it's been 5 months since I said this :DOH:

Finally got around to it

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Looks like the librigena got pushed under the cephalon? Interesting how the preservation goes.

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