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Showing results for tags 'Prep'.
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JohnBrewer kindly sent me some paraloid, i've gone out and bought some 98% acetone and a glass jar. How much Paraloid should i put into a small coffee jar? Thanks
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I was thinking I could keep a running update on my bison prep, discoveries in learning, general happenings. . . Maybe a bit like Ralph’s aka Nimravis’ “Sometimes You Have to Whack It”, only my bison prep style if it isn’t too dull and boring. A recap. I found an almost complete, articulated bison with the skull in January 2019. I have collected the majority of it. I’m working on processing stuff still and prepping it. I’m totally new to vertebrate paleontology type stuff. So there is a big learning curve. I still have bits sitting in bags or small plastic boxes that I haven’t processed and removed the dirt from. That stuff is still moist for the most part. This post will be embarrassingly honest at times about how I messed up something out of sheer ignorance or how something didn’t work as planned. I’m not beating myself up over anything. Lesson learned and I move on all the wiser. I’ll be sharing my trials and errors for 2 or 3 reasons. 1. So someone else will know what worked or didn’t. 2. Hopefully give others the courage or motivation to just try and not be afraid to make mistakes. 3. Show how blond I really am. Noooo! Not really. 4. So others with more experience can chip in and give me guidance and insight. One thing I found out the wrong way is when you rinse the bones off with water and then let them dry, you’re not supposed to get them wet with water again. Never ever. I had no clue, but it makes sense. These specific type of bones are still like very old bone with little to no mineralization. So they’re fragile. When I rinsed the dirt and mud off I did a general, not a thorough cleaning where I got all the dirt out of the nooks and crannies. So I took one of the femurs that had thoroughly dried and went to rinse it again and clean the nitty gritty parts. After I was done I had it sitting next to me on the couch when I heard a very loud crack noise come from the bone! That was not good! I couldn’t find a crack, but clearly somewhere inside a crack had occurred. It was because the bone was dry. When wet it adsorbed the water, swelled and cracked. So no water. If I had known that I would have been more thorough on the initial cleaning.
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Wanted -Unprepped Oreodont. Will trade for Prep Work
Ptychodus04 posted a topic in Member-to-Member Fossil Trades
I'm looking for an unprepped oreodont skull (or skull and partial body) that somebody wants to part with. What do I have to trade? Something more valuable to some collectors than mere fossils, I am willing to trade prep time. No prep too big or too small. Anyone interested? -
I decided to expose some of the bone fragments on my otodus vertebrae cluster and now I will like to finish it. Is there any way I can clean the exposed bones? Some solution? I have been working with a needle mostly but can't clean the bones this way without damaging them. I will like to make them pop out after I preserve the whole thing. Any ideas?
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This was a prep I've last year, but for some reason I've never posted it on the forum. So I thought I might change that. Last year I was fortunate enough to take a visit to the Ernst Quarries and dig for some shark teeth. Although most of the fossil I've taken home are either bones, four partial regular-sized teeth, and mostly tiny partials (some of which I accidentally damaged while digging ), the biggest find of the day was this large Cosmopolitodus hastalis tooth with its crown partially sticking out of the matrix. When Rob noticed the tooth, he initially estimated it to be ~2 inches long and insisted that I keep the tooth in the matrix, saying something like "The tooth itself is worth about $15. If you keep the tooth in the matrix, it'll be worth $60". Although my reason for visiting the Ernst Quarries was to find shark teeth to keep rather than to sell, I for some reason decided to keep the tooth in the matrix. However, I still had to prep this baby when I got home! Below is the tooth how I found it. This was going to be my first (and so far only considerate) prep I've ever done. Rob told me that the matrix can easily be scratched away using a fingernail and so taking his words and some advice I've gotten from the forum regarding something else, I grabbed one of my mom's needles and started quite literally digging off the siltstone. After around 10 minutes, a perfect root base showed up. This tooth is obviously going to be a perfect whole, so you just gotta keep scraping off the matrix. One really helpful thing I've realized at this point is that the needle I was using was perfect for such beginner's prep- it was strong enough to remove matrix effectively but not enough to do any damage to the tooth itself.
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- carcharodon
- cosmopolitodus
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Why does time grind to a halt the moment you place an order for a new prep tool? In a moment of weakness, my wife agreed to me ordering a new Vaniman abrasive blaster and a Paleo Tools Super Jack scribe. Of course, I'm not waiting around for minds to change.
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After so many people showing an Interest in the Golden Cannonball Nodule, I though I’d start a thread to document my Yorkshire finds and prep, be they ammonites, bone, or what ever else. Hope you all enjoy
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Thought this would be an interesting one for anybody overseas, who has never heard of Yorkshire’s Golden Cannonballs. Theyre only found in the UK along the Yorkshire coastline. With a 1/15 chance of having something inside, it’s safe to say they can be quite rare, and are always sought after. More often than not, they either contain one, or multiples of Eleganticeras ammonites inside. I’ll never tire of finding them. Theyre found in the shake jet rocks, and take hours to polish up the iron pyrite to give them their golden glow of you like. Here’s one I recently prepared.
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Just finished prepping a damesella paronai from Shandong, China. The colors are so amazing I thought it worthy of a post. Photos are before and after prep.
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This week I willl be collecting these Otodus Obliquus vertebrae cluster. It's from Morocco and the size is about 65x30cm, there is 24 vertebrae and the biggest one is around 7cm diameter. There is still lots of matrix on the vertebrae so I was planning to finish cleaning it all. I will like your opinion on this. Should I do it, how difficult is it going to be? I like it the way it is already but I am sure it can be finished better. Is it worth trying?
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Partial Triceratops Horn prep + Skin Impression?
AustraliaFossils posted a topic in Fossil Preparation
Hi All, I was wondering if anyone had any tips on prepping this partial Triceratops horn, and if I should us glue or not. I also believe there's a tiny section of skin impression (Which I've gone and highlighted in red) but I could be wrong? any help would be much appreciated... Thanks! Ryan. here are some pictures- 2 replies
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- dinosaur
- fossil skin
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So, what do we all havecurrently on the prep table? Be interesting to see what challenges await everybody. My current piece is this bone block, most likely ichthyosaur rib. A few scattered ammonites from the genus Dactylioceras sp. if expecting to probably found more bone further in all being well, probably a vert or two and some more ribs.
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I was wondering if you guys think there is anything left to be exposed in this carpoid? Thanks, Tyler
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I bagged a couple of Nautilus while down at Lyme Regis recently. The one on the left will be a reverse prepper and still has its shell on which is a joy to see. The other is a polish job, I have a vague idea at how to do it, although I’d appreciate if anybody could give me a rundown or step by step guide on how to get it gleeming, as it’s not something I want to go in blind like I usually do. I’d appreciate any advice. Thanks.
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I took delivery of my next major prep job today from @StevenJD. Man, he can sniff out some cool stuff. It is quite a beast! A nice phytosaur from New Mexico. This appears to have most of the skull and a fair bit of postcranial material. This is only what fit on on the table in my shop. There are 3 more boxes of puzzlesaurus as well! I think I’m in for the long haul on this. If the skull comes together well, I will ultimately be mounting this guy.
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I bought this 18 inch layer in March of 2016 from Blake. @FossilDudeCO Finally felt comfortable enough with the air scribe and micro air abrader to tackle it. looks like I might have found a bit of coprolite in there too. Needs a little bit more final clean up work but I am pretty happy with the way it turned out for my first one.
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- fish
- green river
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I haven't bought this yet. I wanted to see if anyone thought it was a lost cause or has potential. All I know is that it is from China. If appears that it may be able to be cleaned up a bit, kind of like the green river fish...not that I have prepped any of those either.
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Here’s another old prep that I finished up today. This is another from the old collection with no information. So, if anyone knows what these are (besides ammonites ) or where they are from I’d be grateful for the help. This is how it came out from the pile on the back of the shelf. I had done a small amount of prospective scribing but not much.
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Here’s one of my rarer finds. Maybe not for the genus itself, but the size. I found this right when I very first started collecting, I took it home, and glued it up. A few months back I was having a clear up, and found it in a draw, not remembering what it what. I then popped it open again to see what was inside, as you can see, it was quite the mess, and was definitely a reverse prepper. Aroun 8 hours later and here she is in all her glory. A 4 inch Pseudolioceras Boulbiense. A rather rare size, usually they come around 2 inches at the most. Hope you all enjoy
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A little Hildoceras I picked up recently from Saltwick Bay in Whitby. Unfortunately I didn’t take any before pictures to show. All that was showing was the top of the keel and a small portion of the outer whorl. It’s be no means finished yet, but thought people might enjoy the process so far. Iv prepped out some of the matrix underneath to give the ammonite a floating effect.
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- ammonite
- hildoceras
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I saw reference to something called "acid prep" for oil shale fish.... never heard of it, and would like to know more: what kind of "acid", and how is it used. ALSO-- I mainly want info on the prep of fish found in cretaceous Pierre shale-- the black, crumbly stuff. Anyone? Thanks!
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- cretaceous
- fish
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Ok, I’m going to say this is technically a prep thread since I’m building a new dedicated prep shop. It is going to be 8’x10’ and I hope to have it functional by Sunday afternoon! I started this morning relocating my garden boxes. Then I built the base. We don’t have freeze issues so leveling on blocks is acceptable.
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I found a block packed full of bone afew week back, but also full of pyrite. I thought it was just full of fish bone, which is quite common and i often leave it but luckily shoved it in my bag. Yesterday I picked it up and decided to have a dig around in it and was pleasantly surprised to find some ichthyosaur verts! So i suspect it's a mix of fish and Marine reptile, or just all ichthyosaur (Hopefully) Does anybody have any tips for prepping bone in pyrite. I'm probably just going to have a dig around and see what i can uncover, smooth it down with the dremel and add some coating to the bone to bring it out. It's Good practice for me but it's wearing my pen tip down haha. Hopefully there will be more verts to find! There's certainly more space to uncover more. Vert cross section on the bottom Ribs? on the bottom
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I did another ammonite hunting trip to South Dakota this last September with my youngest son and we brought home a ton of rock. Last week my son came over and we got to work. He set up my tile saw with some hot water and I started marking rock where it needed to be cut. We cut a lot of crab concretions too but thats for another thread. I have to say it was a very fun day but now I have my work cut out for me, pun intended. There is some easy stuff to prep and of course some harder stuff to prep. I will start with an easy one. This little ammonite came apart and part of the living chamber was on the opposing piece of rock. I marked that hunk of rock, my son cut it and after it had dried I glued it back on and after 24 hours I scribed off the rock and WaaaaLaaaaa!! This piece is still not done. Im going to cut off a bunch more rock and finish it up so it stands nice and is still in part of the matrix. I believe this is Discoscaphites conradi found in the Fox Hills Formation and is Cretaceous in age. RB
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I spent an hour this evening working on the Eldregops rana trilobite from Penn Dixie that I received unprepared from @Kane. It is a beautiful partially enrolled specimen. Thanks Kane! There’s also a nice little horn coral next to it. Here it is before:
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- penn dixie
- prep
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