Over 100 hours into this prep
This is an indeterminate rib I recovered from the Hell creek formation, on a private ranch near Lemmon South Dakota. It has taken me 8 months to finish this prep! Now, thats not working straight through, I have had a lot of other things requiring my time, but I finally finished the prep and reconstruction of the original material! This rib was fractured with over 100 individual pieces, each requiring separation and air abrasion cleaning before reassembly. All aspects from prospecting to recovery and preparation performed by myself.
It took me 12 hours to remove it from the jacket and do the rough prep of the first 3 sections (the proximal end), which were the most intact pieces. The matrix is a claystone, so it wasnt terrible to work through, but the bone was pretty weak and highly fractured.
Even heavily consolidated, It still was too fragile to remove as a single piece, so I softened the glue everywhere there was a large gap. That actually worked out really well because then I could concentrate on small portions. The sections go right to left, top to bottom. The distal end on the bottom left, and proximal on top right.
I had used the brown epoxy to fill in all the tiny separations to give it a more natural look, but there were a few spots of missing bone. Since I would be recreating those missing parts, I decided to use a grey epoxy to stand out and say “this is not original”.
I kept the fossil in 2 sections until the very end to make working with it easier. The final joint was a very clean and straight break so I knew it would be simple glue. Using the good old 3rd-hand sand bucket, I made the final glue joint. Even though the top section was able to balance, I held the joint for several minutes, then added a couple strips of tape to final stabilization while the glue had 24 hours to fully cure.
Even though the original material prep is complete, I still have work I want to do. I’m excited to fabricate a new head and then weld an armature stand for display. I’m highly tempted to make a mold and cast once the head is complete, but that’s a lot of latex and resin ($$$)