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Malcolmt

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Posted this without telling Jason .... so hopefully he is cool with me posting.

 

Jason went on a trip to Penn Dixie with a group from the forum here over Easter and found some fossils that Jason thought might be worth prepping. I was invited to attend, but there was no getting away from the wife and family over Easter. That was just a non starter.   Anyway for some reason or other he realized that some of the fossils he found were actually quite nice and I guess he probably heard from some of the people on the trip that I might be able to do something with them for him. Well after a flurry of PM's, he decided to risk sending some off, to some old geezer that he didn't know from a hole in the wall, way up in Canada.... lol.  So he sent me a few to have a look at and after 4 days with Fedex they arrived safely yesterday... Big note to anyone out there ...... always use regular USPS to send fossils to Canada it is the least hassle and the least expensive way to do it. Jason learned a bit of a lesson by using Fedex.

 

Based on a quick look he is going to have a few nice ones in what he sent me,  including one potentially large complete and stunning greenops. It has the potential to be one of the better greenops that I have seen come out of Penn Dixie. As with all the really good ones from there, other than part of the pygidium poking out of the matrix it is buried. A bit of a shame the matrix broke right at the edge of the greenops but I guess if it hadn't he would never have seen it. As a result the very tip of one of the pygidial spines is broken of. I could fix that up but not sure if I will , will wait to see final look of the fossil. Using a scope I have already exposed enough to know that a significant amount of the greenops is there including little spines that are generally missing. If you find something like his greenops ........ do not try to do anything with it yourself .... don't even think about it. I have seen far to many spectacular specimens destroyed by someone who just couldn't wait. They just had to pick away to see what was under there. Please have someone experienced who knows what they are doing and who has the right equipment look at it. Fossils like this are rare and fragile, touch it wrong and you have destroyed it. Unfortunately for Jason two other greenops he thought might be good that he sent me are just pygidiums. To have found 3 complete greenops at Penn Dixie in one day is absolutely unheard of and that is even knowing the exact layer in which they are found.

 

Anyway, grabbed one of the fossils at random, eldredgeops rana and here is a quick prep sequence. Prepped using ARO, Pferd and other airscribes and Comco air abrasion unit set at 30 PSI 40 micron dolomite under a Nikon scope. Used a Comco .018 purple high precision nozzle until near the very end when I switched to a .010.

 

Here is a bad picture of the fossil before starting

 

58ffc23dbfcc7_Beforedouble.thumb.jpg.ab47a26dce5cfe665b1ee6cef6428b9e.jpg

 

Here it is 15 minutes into prep

 

58ffc29f41cee_Prep15minsdouble.thumb.jpg.f92ffac7d9c1142ab7d8dfe9feb47bf1.jpg

 

Here it is 30 mins into prep

 

 

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Here it is at 30 minutes into the Prep. You can just see that it is going to be a double.

 

58ffc33ed14fa_Prep30minsdouble.thumb.jpg.bd2806a2e5585b3d57a691098288562a.jpg

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Here it is at 45 minutes into the prep. Definitely see that it has good potential now... and that the 2nd ones is just as nice as the first if not better.

58ffc3935ee29_prep45minsdouble.thumb.jpg.f39970a8b9c9e3e550d93e790199a9d2.jpg

 

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Here it is at one hour and almost done. All that remains to do is some last minute cleanup at higher magnification and a smaller nozzle  (.010) using some 325 mesh dolomite to get into the tight crannies. These were prepped at about 9x magnification but I will go to about 20x for the final cleanup.  As the detail you want to expose becomes smaller you uses finer and finer particle size and smaller nozzle sizes. 0.010 is the smallest nozzle size that COMCO makes. Note that you can see two nice pyritized burrows in this under the prone eldregeops. Probably have 5 minutes of cleanup left but gotta go make supper or the wife will yell at me.

 

 

 

58ffc43f397d3_Amostdonedouble.thumb.jpg.826899a4217e1a939f3dd5e45838d343.jpg

 

 

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:headscratch:

 

Don

 

Oh, there they are now.  For a while the photos were doing the old "polar bear in a snow storm" trick.

 

Let me add: :wub: :drool: :envy:

Also: great prep job!!

 

Don

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Here is a little tease on his greenops....

 

Before prep

 

 

 

58ffc78e3e848_Greenopsbeforeprep.thumb.jpg.9766614b492f5e3b6634d57c4ca8c77b.jpg

 

Greenops at 10 minutes

 

58ffc7c35c2ac_Greenops10mins.thumb.jpg.4a331f120f7410bee039905d1d94d317.jpg

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Roger, At this point not sure probably a bit of broken e rana cephalon and bit of crinoid stem

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Well done as always, Malcolm! 

I like your prep work. 

Thanks for showing us. 

Regards,

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

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  • 3 weeks later...

@Malcolmt these look amazing. I just noticed this post. So excited about that double piece with the prone and roller. Masterful preparation. Truly you have a gift.

Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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I'm not as fast as Malcolm yet as I just finished prepping my first Penn Dixie trilobite of Jason's stash he sent me. I think it turned out nicely. It took me a little over an hour.

 

Here are the before and after shots. I may still try for some clean up in the books and crannies but didn't want to mess this one up.

 

IMG_4347.thumb.JPG.41c504d35accffe629167ecaec3906f5.JPG

IMG_4405.thumb.JPG.72c5692f3d917ad9e42849e4972a507a.JPG

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@Ptychodus04 this is absolutely gorgeous. :wub: Great work! I can't tell if this is a roller or prone but whatever it is, it looks really large and good. Great job preparing it. Looks to be nearly an inch in diameter. I'm sure @Malcolmt could answer any questions if you get stuck on any of those tight spots and need some tips or just someone to relate with due to frustration :P, but from what I'm seeing you've done an absolutely incredible job Kris. Well I'm trying to deploy your website as it's overdue to be deployed but had some hiccups this week with the DNS (domain to IPv4 association). My grandparents came into town early to hang out with me for graduation weekend (graduating with a masters in computer science on Monday) so I've been doing my best to entertain them since Wednesday but as soon as they and my parents head out next Tuesday and the dust settles I'll make a solid reattempt to deploy next week and should be able to nail it once and for all. Thank you so much for being patient with me.

Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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@Fossil-Hound this guy is mostly enrolled. It's a good size for sure. I started on another one this afternoon it's even bigger.

 

no hurry on the web page. Great things don't happen overnight... I'll surely test your patience on the trilobite prep timeline. 

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@Ptychodus04 well I'm really looking forward to seeing them. I'm so jealous that you have all those nice tools to work on them. Someday I'll get all those nice tools then you can teach me the ways of the prep though I don't think I'll be prepping fish anytime soon. Send some more pics for us to drool over as I didn't realize that I had sent a larger specimen. :popcorn:

Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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12 hours ago, Fossil-Hound said:

@Ptychodus04 well I'm really looking forward to seeing them. I'm so jealous that you have all those nice tools to work on them. Someday I'll get all those nice tools then you can teach me the ways of the prep though I don't think I'll be prepping fish anytime soon. Send some more pics for us to drool over as I didn't realize that I had sent a larger specimen. :popcorn:

 

I hope to get some time to work on this guy this evening. You sent quite a few trilobites that look very promising.

 

If you ever decide to start prepping, I'm happy to give you pointers. The first thing is be prepared to ruin some fossils! There's quite a learning curve in fossil preparation.

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@Ptychodus04 when I was out at PD @DevonianDigger helped me select a good assortment of incomplete E. Rana's to practice prep on. Unfortunately there aren't very many Bellacartwrightia so @Malcolmt gets to have fun prepping out that monster of a trilobite. I kept all the Greenops fragments I could find though I don't anticipate prepping any complete Greenops until I'm at the triple black belt preparation level. :-)

Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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