My Collection

[sand]

Here is some of my collection

Edited March 18, 2011 by sand

[Bullsnake]

Very cool! I like pet wood.

[sand]

new to this can only seem to post one picture at a time

[barefootgirl]

new to this can only seem to post one picture at a time

Very nice! I use picasa to down size my photo's so I can post. Anyway there are some explanations on here somewhere on how to downsize your picts. Good luck and welcome to the forum!

[tracer]

your picture is huge by forum standards. try resizing them to around a thousand pixels in the widest dimension and you should be able to do more than one at a time.

[tracer]

pet wood, bison and elephants - a good combination

[JohnJ]

You've been having fun. Nice ivory.

[sand]

Jaw bone with tooth

[JohnJ]

Awesome!

[sand]

most of my teeth

[sand]

my big tusk

[JohnJ]

new to this can only seem to post one picture at a time

Use the Add Reply button at the bottom of all the posts to make your next post.

[astron]

my big tusk

Wow. This is a collection with a shinning future, ...if well organized!!!

Best wishes

Astrinos

[Foshunter]

Nice elephant material for sure, need some hardener on the tusk or will continue to flake off, nice collection--Tom

[sand]

what is the best thing to use as a hardener

[Xenocidaris]

Those are some really neat fossils, but I suppose they could use some preservation/hardening. I think it really depends on where your fossils come from, but if they happen to be from the North Sea area, you could use the method below. That's what I do with my Pleistocene fossils from the North Sea.

First you’ll have to get all the salt out of the fossils. Salt will damage your fossils overtime, so it’s best to get all of it out. This can be done by putting your fossils in fresh water, and refresh the water about twice a week. The more water, the faster the salt gets out. For the medium or bigger fossils at least 6 weeks is advised.

Next you’ll have to dry the fossils, this can be done by wrapping the fossil in a moist towel and placing it in a cool dark place. This way the fossil dries very slowly and doesn’t crack. This is advisable with very nice or delicate fossils. Most of the fossils can be dried without coverage.

Then the most important step to take: conserving the fossil. Conserving the fossil means penetrating it with a glue to increase its strength and to make sure that all the material shrinks and expands at the same rate with varying temperatures. Conserving the fossil can be done by submerging it in a mixture of wood glue and water in a 1:15-20 ratio, at least until no more bubbles come out of it. The mixture should look a lot like milk, in both color and liquidity. I usually submerge smaller/damaged fossils for 30-60 minutes and bigger, more beautiful ones for more then 1 hour. While submerging the fossils, you should steer the mixture about every 5-15 minutes to make sure that it stays mixed. You’ve also got to shake and turn the fossils while submerged to make sure that the glue penetrates the whole fossil.

Next step is to dry the fossil again. After submerging you can let the fossils leak above your glue mixture for a couple of minutes to get most of the glue back. Then you can put them in a dark, cool place to let them dry again. It’s very important to turn them frequently the first few hours, to make sure that they don’t get stuck on the surface of whatever you’re using to let them dry on! That’s because the fossils will steel leek out a lot of glue mixture. It’s also important to make sure that not all of the glue flows to one side of the fossil, so turning it is very important.

The final step is to store the fossils. It’s wise to store them in some place with constant temperature and humidity. You could use a foam box, which is also used to cool fish and vegetables.

It works pretty good for me, but results may vary.

Sincerely,

Bram