Prepping another big one

[Ludwigia]

This time it was a large Arietites solarium from the Early Jurassic Sinemurian with a diameter of 60cm. which my friend brought to me. Here's what it looked like towards the beginning of the prep. I had just trimmed off the matrix around the edges and moved on into the whorls a bit with a club hammer and pointed chisel beforehand.

 

 

I had marked the point with a red line where I figured that the ribs would probably not be there any more and asked him if I should carry on nevertheless and do some carving to finish it off. He agreed, so I carried on. The matrix on these pieces can get very hard and this one turned out to be particularly stubborn. It started to get interesting however as time went on, since pieces of rib were turning up where I hadn't expected them. Just goes to show that even with experience you can make false judgements. Since I didn't want to risk damaging the ribs, I started using the abrader as well as the air pen and moved back and forth between the two. Here's how it looked after about 6 hours.

 

 

It was getting even more interesting, since the ribs just kept on appearing. But the matrix started to get even harder, so I had to turn the pressure on the abrader up to 8 bar (120psi). It was also getting a little strenuous having to lift up the thing each time I had to clean the powder and grit out of the box in order to refill the abrader tank, so I was having to take a few coffee breaks in between. Here's what it looked like after another 6 hours or so.

 

 

As you can see, I had discovered more ribs farther along the line. The trick is to try to follow the seam between the outer and inner whorls in order to ascertain what's under the matrix without causing any major damage. You can also see the area in between where there is still some matrix. The problem was that the ribs were there, but they had been pressed quite a bit downwards. I worked along a bit more and then sent him the following photo to ask him if I should carve the matrix within the circle or remove it and also to show him with the red line where I thought that the ribs finally disappeared.

 

 

He decided that I should carve that spot, which turned out to be the right decision in the end. I then ended up discovering a few rib remnants on the way to the centre, but from there on it was mostly carving with the air pens and then smoothing everything out and removing the excess matrix with the abrader.

 

 

I still had a bit of work ahead of me filling in gaps and making the odd improvement with epoxy putty. Then balancing the color on the repaired spots and finishing off with my trusty rember beeswax finish. By the time I was finished I had invested 28 hours in getting this guy done, but it sure looks to me like it was worth it. My friend too

 

 

[Fossildude19]

Lovely work, Roger!  

[Ludwigia]

9 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

Lovely work, Roger!  

[JarrodB]

Wow great job. 

[Welsh Wizard]

That’s a great transformation.

 

well done.

[Ptychodus04]

Beautiful work Roger.

[belemniten]

Awesome work Roger 

[Pagurus]

[Ludwigia]

3 hours ago, JarrodB said:

Wow great job. 

 

2 hours ago, Welsh Wizard said:

That’s a great transformation.

 

well done.

 

2 hours ago, Ptychodus04 said:

Beautiful work Roger.

 

53 minutes ago, belemniten said:

Awesome work Roger 

 

25 minutes ago, Pagurus said:

Thanks guys

 

[FossilNerd]

Beautiful! 

[Ludwigia]

33 minutes ago, FossilNerd said:

Beautiful! 

Thank you.

[Mr_ed]

Awesome work

[Ludwigia]

6 minutes ago, Mr_ed said:

Awesome work

[RJB]

You do some amazing quality work my friend!!!   Tip:  maybe a lazy suzan to help move you work around?

 

RB

[Ludwigia]

4 hours ago, RJB said:

You do some amazing quality work my friend!!!   Tip:  maybe a lazy suzan to help move you work around?

 

RB

Thanks, Ron. And thanks for the tip. I noticed you recently added one yourself.

[Bobby Rico]

Absolutely top of the class preparation. A beautifully big ammonite. 

[Ludwigia]

1 hour ago, Bobby Rico said:

Absolutely top of the class preparation. A beautifully big ammonite. 

Thanks Bobby.

[RJB]

On 9/7/2019 at 11:40 AM, Ludwigia said:

Thanks, Ron. And thanks for the tip. I noticed you recently added one yourself.

  Yeah I did.  I can move around these big fish slabs of mine very easily with just one finger.  Quite nice I say.

 

RB