First attempt!

[I_gotta_rock]

Went to Virginia a few months ago and came home with a few Chesapectin nefrens  encased in solid rock. This one was only exposed as a ring of shell material in a ball of clay, calcite, iron ,broken shell and who knows what else. Normally I prep things with soft brushes, dental picks, a water pick, and very gentle fingers. That wasn't cutting it this time and I had to get aggressive. I spent 3+ hours with a rotary tool and zero practice.

 

It's no museum piece, but it's not horrible. I could simply collect the same species, from the same member of the same formation, at a much closer spot, where the matrix is much looser, but I gotta learn sometime. Suggestions for next time?

 

 

[ynot]

Nice !

[caldigger]

Heather, what sort of bit are you using on your tool?  It looks like it has a really small head which will have minimal surface area to work with.

[Fossil-Hound]

@I_gotta_rock great progress. I'll admit to never have to prepare a C. nefrens. I have literally hundreds of these from picking them up off the beach in Maryland (never had to prepare them). What you do have looks absolutely gorgeous though.

[I_gotta_rock]

8 hours ago, caldigger said:

Heather, what sort of bit are you using on your tool?  It looks like it has a really small head which will have minimal surface area to work with.

Yes, I was using a fine diamond bit, trying to go very slowly and carefully. It is still too fat to get the crud out of the finer sculpture, but the dirt does bring out the texture. I had thought about using a wire brush head, but decided that was too aggressive. I didn't want to rip through the matrix and destroy something unseen in the rock. Even with a very delicate touch, I flattened too much of the ribbing on the exterior close to the hinge.

[RJB]

  Ya gotta learn sometime.  Id say you did a really good job and its a very nice lookin pectin too.

 

RB

[I_gotta_rock]

7 hours ago, Fossil-Hound said:

@I_gotta_rock great progress. I'll admit to never have to prepare a C. nefrens. I have literally hundreds of these from picking them up off the beach in Maryland (never had to prepare them). What you do have looks absolutely gorgeous though.

Thank you! I, too, find much nicer shells of the same species in MD. This chalky one is from Westmoreland Co., VA. The ones along Matoaka are colorful and sometimes still pearlescent. Also found a few in MD that have pear buds. However, this VA site has mollusk species I have not encountered before. Better to learn on a Chesapectin than to try to excavate something rare with no practice and destroy it.

[I_gotta_rock]

9 hours ago, Fossil-Hound said:

@I_gotta_rock great progress. I'll admit to never have to prepare a C. nefrens. I have literally hundreds of these from picking them up off the beach in Maryland (never had to prepare them). What you do have looks absolutely gorgeous though.

And after just complaining that the VA stuff wasn't as nice, I find this in the box. This one only needed a little picking and some gentle brushing. I have never found a shell with details this pristine before. Just gorgeous! If only I cold find the chip that fell out of that hole.

[Fossil-Hound]

@I_gotta_rock yeah that's a nice one. You can see the growth plating on the horizontal grain. Very nice color. What you could do is take some plumber's white putty put it over the hole then use some very light tan paint and paint that little spot. Always better to start with lighter paint then you can apply darker if need be. That one is very nice. You might also want to put it in a riker with some fluff to stabilize it.

[I_gotta_rock]

19 minutes ago, Fossil-Hound said:

@I_gotta_rock yeah that's a nice one. You can see the growth plating on the horizontal grain. Very nice color. What you could do is take some plumber's white putty put it over the hole then use some very light tan paint and paint that little spot. Always better to start with lighter paint then you can apply darker if need be. That one is very nice. You might also want to put it in a riker with some fluff to stabilize it.

Odds are, this one will go in an acid-free cardboard box in a climate-controlled cabinet in my local Natural History Museum. There is a small but growing collection there with my name on it. There are quite a few C. nefrens there now, but nothing quite so nice.

[Fossil-Hound]

10 minutes ago, I_gotta_rock said:

Odds are, this one will go in an acid-free cardboard box in a climate-controlled cabinet in my local Natural History Museum. There is a small but growing collection there with my name on it. There are quite a few C. nefrens there now, but nothing quite so nice.

That's awesome. What's the name of your local museum? I was thinking about contributing some stuff to my local museum. That's really neat.

[I_gotta_rock]

Just now, Fossil-Hound said:

That's awesome. What's the name of your local museum? I was thinking about contributing some stuff to my local museum. That's really neat.

It's the Delaware Museum of Natural History. They have one of the 10 largest documented mollusk collections in the US, but until recently the "local" shells were pretty much all from Florida. I started fixing that problem as a volunteer a couple years ago, vis the PaleoPartner badge. It was just this month that I got to take the "Siple Collection" out of the holding cabinet and move everything to their proper shelves in the collection.