From the Mountains of Madness: Part Three

In Part One of the "From the Mountains of Madness" project I talked about selecting a case to hold all the artifacts and why I chose the one I did. Part Two discussed scientific specimens you might want to include based on what Lovecraft's story actually describes, with a brief foray into making muslin storage bags for the samples. This segment of the project will deal with a specific example of those samples- the rock cores bored out by Pabodie's revolutionary drilling rig.

One of the nice things about this particular stage of the project is how easy it is to obtain what you'll need. Stop by at any gem and rock shop on the internet (or in the real world) and for just a few dollars you should be able to pick up absolutely authentic examples of the core samples produced by a rock drill. While collectors can inflate the price of borings tied to a particularly interesting historic site or mine you'll find that generic cores are absurdly easy to come by. If you can't find them at a rock shop you can always hit Ebay, where they pop up at reasonable prices on a regular basis. Here's what they look like:



These three are all about 3" in length and cost me around $5. The calipers next to them, another artifact that would logically be part of Dyer's collection, cost $1 at a junk shop/antique store. Add some labels describing where the samples were taken, drop them into one of the sample bags from Part Two, and this part of the project is complete.

Well, almost complete. For the finishing touch you can add a copy of Pabodie's original specification for the drilling rig. Just click through on the example pictures below, print them out, and age them.





The Pabodie rig diagrams are CC licensed, so they're freely available for personal use.