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Finally got a trench profile to stop crumbling with a $4 spray bottle trick
I was fighting these sandy soil layers at a site near Pecos, New Mexico for weeks. Every time I tried to clean a profile face for photos, it would just flake and slide right off. Then I read some old field notes from 1982 that said to mist the face lightly with water and a tiny bit of white glue. One spray from a cheap bottle and the whole thing held together perfect for the camera. Anyone else ran into loose dirt making your excavation shots useless?
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dakota_taylor3910d ago
My buddy in New Mexico tried the same thing with straight water on a bad sand layer and it just made mud. He ended up having to wait three days for it to dry out again before he could even take the photos.
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jamie79410d ago
Tossed a little dish soap in the water to break the tension on the sand. Worked way better.
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nathan1937d ago
Three days for sand to dry? That sounds like a bit of an overreaction. Sand usually dries pretty fast even in humid weather, just give it an hour in the sun. Maybe your buddy was working with something more like clay or silt mixed in. I've dumped a bucket of water on dry sand before and it was good to go in under an hour. Dish soap trick helps too, but it doesn't take days to recover from a little water. I think he might have been exaggerating the timeline.
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