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owen

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You can inquire at a natural history museum. I don't see jobs like that come up often, though. 

Let me tag one of our great museum workers who might be able to say more about how to get into that field. @jpc

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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I don't know of any prep jobs open right now, but let me ask you these:  Are you willing to move?  Otherwise what part of California are you in?  What sort of experience do you have? 

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22 hours ago, owen said:

@jpc

I'm in Modesto and I want to stay with family and I have a good experience.

Are there any museums in the area that actually do paleontology?  That would be the first place to check.  

 

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36 minutes ago, owen said:

one but it is near the fires

My advice column is no use on this one.  We just has 6 inches of wet snow... I will be spending the weekend bringing broken branches to the dump.  

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It would probably be easier if you started out volunteering for a museum or university.  Let them see your prep abilities, job skills and work ethic first.  Theyd be a lot more inclined to hire someone they know can be a good volunteer, compared to paying an unknown.

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"There is no shortage of fossils. There is only a shortage of paleontologists to study them." - Larry Martin

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1 hour ago, jpc said:

My advice column is no use on this one.  We just has 6 inches of wet snow... I will be spending the weekend bringing broken branches to the dump.  

8"  of snow in Red Lodge....back to 90 degrees Monday. :)

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Everything is generated through your own will power ~ Ray Bradbury
 

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Pretty standard for here. Staying ahead of the virus, Bobby? You and the missus?

Everything is generated through your own will power ~ Ray Bradbury
 

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  • 3 weeks later...

It isn’t easy to get rolling as an independent preparator but with enough patience, it can be done. You have to provide a pile of successful preps before people want to take a chance on you possibly ruining their fossils. Volunteering is very helpful but sounds dangerous for you currently.

 

I prepped heavily for 10-12 years while donating prepped specimens to my local museum. Once they were convinced I knew what I was doing, they asked me to start volunteering in the lab. I quickly started to receive the most difficult projects. I even had a shelf in the lab for projects that others weren’t allowed to work on.
 

After that I started doing prep work for a local rock shop who had customers bringing in fossils to prep or repair. It snowballed from there. 
 

It takes time but it is worth it. I regularly work on some pretty exotic stuff. Plus, being an independent preparator, I work on my own schedule. @Ludwigia is a very successful, and talented, independent preparator. He may have some advice to share.

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7 hours ago, Ptychodus04 said:

 @Ludwigia is a very successful, and talented, independent preparator. He may have some advice to share.

Thanks for the laurels, Kris, but I need to put your statement into perspective. The only thing I'm usually successful at is doing a good job. That said in all humility. I am purely a hobby preparator specialized in invertebrates who spends a lot of his spare time in his retired years at the work bench. I'm not trying to make a living at it, just having a bit of fun, and only have a small mimimum of regular customers who have come to me over word of mouth and I'm not necessarily on the lookout for more. That said, I would agree with that which Kris has written. You would have a long road ahead of you before you can make a living at it unless you happen to have the necessary talent and the huge luck to get a full-time job at a museum.

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Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger

http://www.steinkern.de/

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