RainBoKatchr Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Is there anything I can use on wet mudstone to keep it from cracking and disintigrating when drying out? In other words, something that will displace the water and keep the material together? My usual treatment methods only work when the matrix is relatively dry, but by then the material has fallen apart, because water is basically the only thing holding it together. This is concerning delicate leaf and crab fossils I am finding in soft mudstone and siltstone in part of the Astoria formation in Oregon. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Maybe you could post a few pics of your material, but offhand, what I do is put some Weldbond glue diluted with water into a syringe and inject it into the fossil. (dilute at least 1 to 1 ratio). The syringe is so that I can apply it where it will do the most good (soak into cracks) without coating the outer surface of the fossil itself but you could do that too if necessary, I just don't like to leave a sheen on my fossils - if any glue gets on the fossil I just dab it off with toilet paper before it dries. I haven't tried prepping anything that I have treated this way because I dont have the means, but I needed to do something in a hurry to stabilize the stuff and I'll worry about prepping later. But I dont think it will be a problem to someone who knows what they're doing and has the right tools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 read this entire topic and follow the link i posted and read some of that. not a perfectly direct analog but probably your best bet. link the biggest decision i have on wet fossils is whether they will survive slow drying, with or without assistance from ethanol and possible acetone. if they will, then that's what i try to do. if they won't, then i punt and add pva glue to the water they're in and let them sit for a day or so and hope the pva molecules can stay in there and do something good when the water vamooses. but then i still dry they slowly. i kind of try to dry fossils slowly no matter how structurally sound i think they are, because a lot of things just have a tendency to crack as the water migrates to the surface and evaporates. but i tend to splash a bit of ethanol on the fossil before i semi-cover it's container for the slow drying because i don't want it to get mold or mildew going on due to staying wet longer than normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proxestops Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Fossils found in caves often have the same problem. They have the consistency of cream cheese, and then crumble when dried out. It's my understanding that some folks have used PEG (polyethylene glycol) carbowax as a consolidant. The link by Tracer (above) talks about using carbowax. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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