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Simple Homemade Display Stands


Sagebrush Steve

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Thought I would share some simple, inexpensive display stands I made for some of my smaller fossils.  I don't suggest these are museum quality, but hopefully this will encourage others to experiment.  These fossils were in my display case but just lying on the floor of a shelf.  I didn't feel this was an optimum way to display them.  I wanted to get them up off the floor, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money.  So I decided to go with a simple wooden base together with some brass rod I bent to shape.  The wood came from a 1x3" piece of red oak, 2 feet long, that I got at the local Osh hardware store for $4.49.  I sawed some pieces off of it the correct length and have plenty left over for future use.  For the brass, I bought some 1/16" rod (4 pieces, 12" long each, for $2.99) and some 3/32 brass tubing (3 pieces, 12" long each for $3.49), also from Osh.  I figured out what lengths I needed and cut them with a jeweler's saw.  There is plenty left over for more stands.  The tubing serves as the straight vertical piece, and the rod (which fits neatly inside the tubing) is bent to shape to hold the fossil.  I don't try to get a tight fit around the fossil, I want to be able to easily remove the fossil whenever I want.  After I got everything the way I wanted it, I soldered the brass together using 95:5 tin-silver solder (it is fairly strong for a soft solder).  Unfortunately the color of the solder doesn't match the brass, but it's behind the fossil out of view so I wasn't too worried.

 

For the wood stand, I rounded the corners of the wood and sanded it smooth, then figured out where I wanted the vertical rods and drilled 3/32 diameter holes at those locations. I then stained the wood with some leftover stain from another project.  After it dried, I sprayed on two coats of clear gloss polyurethane.  After everything was dry, I inserted the rods into the holes and used some 5-minute epoxy on the underside to hold them in place (there is a shallow clearance hole drilled on the underside of the hole for the epoxy).  The labels are just something I put together from PowerPoint and printed on ordinary paper using a color laser printer.  I protected the front of the label with ordinary scotch tape and used spray adhesive on the back to apply it to the wood.

 

The one thing I'm not sure about is whether I should dip the ends of the brass rod where they touch the fossil in some liquid plastic something like black Plasti-Dip.  I'm worried the brass might scratch the fossil where it touches, but I'm not sure whether a plastic covering would be archival quality.  Any advice would be welcome.  Hope this inspires you to try your own designs.

 

5902ae9a51ff9_Stand1.thumb.jpg.2f57de27fb257b061a72b77a3f621cfc.jpg5902ae9b5c834_Stand2.thumb.jpg.1cad3b261dbe358fceb478037ff07807.jpg5902ae9c70ed5_Stand3.thumb.jpg.5a4d98a31a540680b489ec925e791555.jpg5902ae9d705b7_Stand4.thumb.jpg.c4916774cf5697e019688ac8abe934dd.jpg

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Instead of glue or plastic, see if you can find a small jar of museum wax.  But wait, that is pricey.  How about some of that sticky stuff that just mail companies use to " glue" things to the junk mail.  

 

Edit: i forgot to say that they look nice.  Good job.

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8 hours ago, jpc said:

Instead of glue or plastic, see if you can find a small jar of museum wax.  But wait, that is pricey.  How about some of that sticky stuff that just mail companies use to " glue" things to the junk mail.  

 

Edit: i forgot to say that they look nice.  Good job.

 

Something like this? https://www.amazon.com/Quakehold-66111-2-Ounce-Museum-Wax/dp/B000FJU29U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493385876&sr=8-1&keywords=museum+wax 

 

Not too pricey and probably better than rubber cement.  Thanks for the recommendation!  I hadn't heard of that stuff before but can probably find plenty of uses for it.

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Great ideas.  An imaginative display adds another dimension to a specimen.

 

Re the wood.  Thrift stores are a great source for material.  The base of souvenirs, jewelly boxes, trophies, etc.  Sections can be reworked or a piece flipped over.

 

I've always liked hand written labels in fountain pen  ink to give a Victorian curio effect but my writing is terrible. Your coloured labels are a good alternative as it gives some added character.

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Thanks for the tutorial, Steve!

Great Job! :wub: 

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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  • 5 years later...

I took inspiration from this topic and made a stand for this theropod toe... Great technique, relatively easy, and cheap. I'd recommend this method to anyone who needs to make a custom stand for small fossils, and will likely be making more myself.

 

PXL_20220531_043301860.thumb.jpg.cf611edb6832895b895116ff5e7ff690.jpg

 

PXL_20220531_043234510.thumb.jpg.d4e6fa52bca1e5f2b61c0af62ea07566.jpg

Edited by Norki
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I do a bit the same thing but trying to make the support invisible. For me, we should only see the fossil. That's why I use plexiglass bases.

I collect them from jewelry stores when the shops change their decor or from scraps from DIY stores

 

IMGP1623.JPG.ca415219b264349ac1dcf9c3e4085665.JPG

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I'm always very impressed by people being able to make these kinds of stands themselves, as it does involve a lot of different crafts techniques. Much like @caterpillar, I myself prefer plexiglass stands over anything else (unless the fossil is simply too heavy, then I'll go for metal), so as not to distract from the fossils. However, I mostly go for the prefab stuff, and might combine things to make the stand I need (e.g., join a couple of sliding stands to lift something up in a hollow underneath, cut a plexiglass ring for something with a round base). And even while I sometimes do use store displays as well, when I do I almost always buy them ready made. Maybe I should just trust myself more to make a pretty and sturdy stand :P

 

Anyway, this is a great tutorial and does provide inspiration to maybe try something like this myself once. Thanks for the pointers! And great work, the stands shown here all look really good! :D

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'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/31/2022 at 6:10 PM, Norki said:

I took inspiration from this topic and made a stand for this theropod toe... Great technique, relatively easy, and cheap. I'd recommend this method to anyone who needs to make a custom stand for small fossils, and will likely be making more myself.

 

PXL_20220531_043301860.thumb.jpg.cf611edb6832895b895116ff5e7ff690.jpg

 

PXL_20220531_043234510.thumb.jpg.d4e6fa52bca1e5f2b61c0af62ea07566.jpg

I think this is an old forum discussion but I just wanted to say that this display is KILLER! So well done. 

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  • 1 month later...

I figured I'd post another simple variation of this method, because why not? This time, I used a piece of silicified wood to showcase this tyrannosaur tooth.

 

tyrannosaur_tooth.thumb.jpg.56beb016656a4ae73ee045122b68a171.jpg

 

 

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52 minutes ago, Norki said:

I figured I'd post another simple variation of this method, because why not? This time, I used a piece of silicified wood to showcase this (associated) tyrannosaur tooth.

 

tyrannosaur_tooth.thumb.jpg.56beb016656a4ae73ee045122b68a171.jpg

 

Looks stunning! How's the tooth attached, though? I'm asking since I prefer my specimens mounted in a non-intrusive, non-destructive way...

'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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3 hours ago, pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon said:

 

Looks stunning! How's the tooth attached, though? I'm asking since I prefer my specimens mounted in a non-intrusive, non-destructive way...


I also much prefer non-intrusive, non-destructive methods. The tooth is partly hollow, so I simply filed the brass rod down to a point and then gently pressed the fossil into place. It's fixed there only by friction and gravity.
 

(Not so with the petrified wood, in that case the rod is fixed with paraloid into a drilled hole)...

Edited by Norki
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4 hours ago, Norki said:

I also much prefer non-intrusive, non-destructive methods. The tooth is partly hollow, so I simply filed the brass rod down to a point and then gently pressed the fossil into place. It's fixed there only by friction and gravity.

 

Nice solution! ;)

'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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