Monday, June 1, 2009

Air Scribe of a Brachiopod

Over the weekend I got a chance to use an air scribe for the first time. My intent was to clean a blastoid that was recently given to me. I will post my initial work on this soon. After realizing that it takes quite a bit of time to fully clean a fossil so I picked up this brachiopod to clean one side real fast.

This first picture is of the side of Ordovician brachiopod found east of Louisville, Kentucky that was not cleaned.

Here is the picture of the other side that has been cleaned.

A close up of part of the brachiopod. You can see the growth lines.

Different angle view of the cleaned brachiopod.

2 comments:

Shamalama said...

Ooooo.... I have GOT to get me one of those!

Michael Popp said...

It is a nice cleaning tool. The one I was using was discarded by a dentist. I thought I would have more issues with wearing a respirator while using it but I got use to having it on.
You have to have patience cleaning and be careful not to damage the fossil.
Next I am going to explore using the brush attachments on a Dremel tool to remove matrix.