Hash plate prep, lots going on in this one.

[Recker]

I've been trying my hand at prepping this hash plate that I found on the Whitewater River in Southeast Indiana.  Gotta do something when the river is high and the weather sucks!!  There is a lot of bits and pieces going on in this one and the color of the fossils are odd compared to the matrix they are in which is really soft.  Thought I'd share, what caused this jumble of fossils, and what do you see?

[Recker]

This is another one I've been pecking away at with my pin LOL.

[Fossildude19]

Nice hash plates.

The first one has a number of brachiopod valves on it, ... maybe some Leptaena sp.

The backside of that piece is showing lots of cross sections of many shells. 

Something like this occurs when high energy environments dump debris of similar size in one place, and they become cemented together. 

 

The second item has what appear to be trilobite bits, and branching coral, or bryozoans. 

Neat finds.   

 

[Recker]

1 hour ago, Fossildude19 said:

Nice hash plates.

The first one has a number of brachiopod valves on it, ... maybe some Leptaena sp.

The backside of that piece is showing lots of cross sections of many shells. 

Something like this occurs when high energy environments dump debris of similar size in one place, and they become cemented together. 

 

The second item has what appear to be trilobite bits, and branching coral, or bryozoans. 

Neat finds.   

 

Thanks Fossildude, I'll keep pecking away at the back side of if and we will see what it reveals. the trilobite bits are exciting, the first that I've found!  I'm learning so much, never realized that while the area in which I live was the bottom of the Ordovician sea, yet weather events occurred like hurricanes.  Pretty amazing.  

[hrguy54]

Due to their size, maybe they should be referred to as "hash saucers".

[siteseer]

Pin vises work on many matrices.  It's just slower, requiring more patience but there's also less risk with breaking something as sometimes happens with a scribe if you're not super-careful with something delicate.

 

Some preparators make their own pin vise by taking a piece of 2-part putty and shaping it so that it's more comfortable in holding position than a vise you can buy, inserting the pin of your choice so you have a custom tool when it hardens.