I polished the stalagmite with 3 types of wet use sandpaper , 600, 1000 and 1200 coarseness. Made a big difference in being able to see the layers. Tomorrow I just have to draw the scale along the growth axis and label the hendy test sampling sites (H1-H7, going from top to bottom).
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Anyways, here is a scan at 600dpi taken on a copy machine - who knew they could do that! Isnt technology wonderful :)
The scale is a cm scale, and my sample is 19,1cm along that line. That will make for around 190 samples for stable isotope analysis. Whee! Drill drilldrilldrill!
As you can see, sadly, my sample is broken - probably happened during the sawing but was not visible until I removed the plaster. Much gnashing of teeth from my part about that, lemme tell ya!
Martin and I went to the SU Butiken and purchased 350 glass sampling vials and papers to use for the sample material. My first time in the SU Butiken - some seriously cool stuff in there, and I understand now why everyone seems to drink Skånerost coffee. And all this time I just thought there was a common agreement that it was the best coffee ever. Meh.
]]>And a final large size image of G2u, thick section on the right this time :)
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Well today was the first day of working on the preparation of the material for my masters thesis!
I made a box for my sample material and mixed plaster of paris to cast the stalagmite in the box. I did this to make the sample easier to handle and more stable for when we cut the thick section from it.
The box is made from scrap cardboard (go recycling!) and packing tape, and measures around 27cmx7cmx7cm.
It was a bit difficult to stablize it so that the flat inner surface of the stalagmite was paralell with the box side so I made some support inserts to hold it in position.
We filled the box up to around 4-5cm from the bottom as it has a very uneven surface.
The plaster of paris was hilarious - holy messy! Also, way more than 1/3 water was needed to make it possible to pour - boo on package directions!
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