It's been a rainy autumn so far, which puts a damper on getting out in the field. So, why not warm up the tools? I started out with one piece with three trilobites on it, a combination flip and stabilization job. The shale is very brittle with numerous hidden fractures... and the pieces were not snug enough for the gluing, and there wasn't much of a way of fastening them together with the vice clamps without breaking the shale. Suffice it to say, it was an unmitigated disaster... but one I can fix later when I have the patience to give it another go. It wasn't the best of my ideas to take on a complex job right away! I am performing a flip job on a ventral, and waiting for the matrix-paste I ground up to cure. That I'll save for another post. Let's get to the low hanging fruit. This is a Gravicalymene sp. I found in the Nicolet Fm in the Montreal area. Sadly, it was already exposed and missing some shell. Still, I made the best of it. I could tinker with it a bit more, of course. This is soft shale that takes well to baking soda abrasion. I didn't once have to take out the scribe for this one. This is a giant, inflated Eldredgeops rana that I found not far from my house, in a particular horizon of the Dundee Fm that is cherty and breaks in chunks -- many times right through fossils. My collecting friend and expert preparator advised me to be very careful with this one since, well, how many Dundee Fm Eldredgeops rana have people found? Unlike the same species in the Windom shales of Penn Dixie, this one is not small or partially flattened. But, as can be seen, it is missing some shell and requires a bit of resto. Preparation in this rock is hardly simple. This specimen needed considerable stabilization even before even thinking about scribing. I used the ME-9100 to remove the big chunks of matrix, always careful to control any transferred vibration that would cause the rock to break apart in an inconvenient spot. I swapped between a Pferd and full dolomite abrasion for the rest. This was a tricky bug, including some fractured mess at the top of the glabella, and the shell is both relatively thick but also very fragile.. Still, a plump and healthy specimen measuring 50 mm (2 inches), or 60 mm (2.5 inches) if completely outstretched.
It would look even better if I landscape the matrix more, but I can't seem to master that skill yet. Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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