@KNelstead posted a really good summary on Facebook:
We’ve been waiting for four years for Dr Andrew Snelling to publish the results of his Grand Canyon folding study, and Answers in Genesis just published a 96-page paper that basically says, “I didn’t find anything.” This is not the “the ground breaking paper” young-Earth creationists were hoping for.
One of the main reasons Dr Snelling collected samples from the Tapeats Sandstone in the Grand Canyon was his hope to demonstrate that the sediments were soft when folded. He was hoping to see signs of soft-sediment deformation in thin sections, and it is clear that he did not see that evidence. His lengthy section on thin sections (pp. 204-231) concludes with “Thus, it is likewise concluded that the Tapeats Sandstone is unmetamorphosed in all places where it was examined in the Grand Canyon.” This is not a surprising conclusion, as geologists have not been claiming that the Tapeats has undergone even low-grade metamorphism, or that the folds in the Tapeats occurred under metamorphic temperature or pressure conditions.
The Discussion section of the article, likewise, does not even touch on the topic of folding. The “Future Work” section lets us know that more research and more papers are coming. This petrology paper was just preparation for “detailed studies to determine the nature and timing of the folding of this sandstone unit.” Snelling states, “This will require scanning electron microscope (SEM) imaging of selected samples to closely examine the cement crystals which would show evidence of brittle fracturing and healing if the folding occurred after lithification, but would be still pristine if cementation occurred after soft-sediment deformation and before lithification.” Apparently Snelling did not find what he was looking for in the thin sections, so he is going deeper. That sometimes happens in research, so I am not going to fault him for this.
What the paper shouts out loud, however, is that Dr Snelling has not yet found clear evidence that the sediments were soft when folded.