Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Introducing Agwē (also known as my fish)


Hi again! Becca here!

As requested, here's a photo of the current state of my Green River fish.
He (as I have hysterically named this thing Adalstien Hamish Agwē, because "Adalstien" means "noble rock" and "Agwē" means "demon fish" in old Norse, and Hamish is just a cool middle name [I'm not crazy, I promise!]) has had two students work on him before me, and has incomplete provenance in terms of where he's from, what he is, or what happened to his tail-- but! He's a lot of fun to work on.

Looks like he has some damage from an air abrasive tool, and the bone itself is very brittle, so I'm chipping away at the rock around very slowly, cleaning out the limestone around his vertebrae especially. I have a number of dental tools that I tend to favour. I'm also experimenting with using Paleo Bond on the weaker, cleaned areas of Agwē here, which seems to work well. But I'm hesitant to do so, simply because there's still so much to clean!

I'm open to any and all tips on how best to proceed!

5 comments:

Jaime Hazard said...

Becca, I'm delighted to see you blogging for the museum. I love your posts. Keep it up. You make me laugh...as always.
Jaime

Momander said...

Jaime,
How the heck are you. We are having a great time with Becca. She is really shaping up the Prep Lab.
From Maureen

Unknown said...

Hi Becca! Try the PB40 or the penetrant/stabilizer and apply it with the tip of a thin brush. It will soak into the bone and into any gaps and make an excellent bond. - Mike

Unknown said...

Jaime! How are you?!?!
And it's nice being back at the museum. I think I actually missed the JM closet... and Prep Lab's a blast.

Unknown said...

Thanks so much for the tip, Mike! I'll definitely try that-- anything to keep this fish in one piece!