canheaton Posted December 18, 2013 Share Posted December 18, 2013 Hello! Im going to be heading back to the peace river sometime soon and plan on shipping a bunch of matrix back with me. My question is what size to classify it down to to get the most bang for my shipping buck! The screens that im looking at ( on ebay ) are for gold panning classifying. They give the screen size by the inch.. so they sell sets that fit together that go from 1/8" to 1/12" to 1/20" and so on... up till 1/100" witch looks to me like metal cloth! With screen sizes shown like like they are.. What sizes would you guys go with? .......... Thank You! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcoSr Posted December 18, 2013 Share Posted December 18, 2013 A lot depends on where you will be sifting, the formations themselves or river gravel, what you are interested in finding, what kind of searching aides that you have at home (like microscopes, magnifying loupes etc.) and what is your searching patience. If you don't have searching aides don't go below window screen as you won't see most of the really small micros with the naked eye. The very small matrix can be very time consuming and sometimes tedious to search. Again don't go below window screen if you don't have a lot of time and patience and aren't looking for specific small specimens that you know are found at the site you took the matrix from. If you screen in an area where the fossils are coming out of the formation you can find some really nice small specimens. In the rivers most of the really small stuff gets too water worn to find or recognize. However, I've gotten matrix from creeks and streams from Florida that was loaded with small mammal teeth down to .5mm. But I haven't seen the same really small teeth survive in the rivers. Even window screen may be too small depending again what you are looking for. 1/8 inch may be small enough. Marco Sr. "Any day that you can fossil hunt is a great day." My family fossil website Some Of My Shark, Ray, Fish And Other Micros My Extant Shark Jaw Collection Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Hamilton Posted December 18, 2013 Share Posted December 18, 2013 (edited) Hello! Im going to be heading back to the peace river sometime soon and plan on shipping a bunch of matrix back with me. My question is what size to classify it down to to get the most bang for my shipping buck! The screens that im looking at ( on ebay ) are for gold panning classifying. They give the screen size by the inch.. so they sell sets that fit together that go from 1/8" to 1/12" to 1/20" and so on... up till 1/100" witch looks to me like metal cloth! With screen sizes shown like like they are.. What sizes would you guys go with? .......... Thank You! The gold classifiers you are describing are the same ones I use when I'm collecting and processing micro matrix. The smallest screen of the set (1/100") is smaller than standard window screen. As Marco mentioned it really depends on what aids you have available at home and what size specimens you want to find. Edited December 18, 2013 by John Hamilton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
canheaton Posted December 18, 2013 Author Share Posted December 18, 2013 Thank you for the great info. I do have a USB microscope for my laptop.I'll have to sample a few creeks for quality micros! Thanks!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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