245g Portland Freightliner Fordite High Grade Colorful Lapidary Rough (5027)
This listing is for the exact rough material pictured. Comes with a certificate of authenticity. One could cut some nice cabochons out of this material. You can see what it looks like cut up in the pictures of finished pieces elsewhere in my web store. Rough material recently came from an old paint booth at Daimler Truck facility in Portland, Oregon where they have made both Freightliner and Western Star Trucks so I am unsure of exact models this came from. I only have a limited quantity of it that I got from a one time source. It is uncertain to unlikely that I will ever get more so I am only letting a small amount of this rough go. I live in Portland so the locally sourced material is particularly dear to me!
I do have fordite beads, pendants, earrings, and face polished specimens in my other listings. I also work in material from Jeep, Ford Truck, Ford Focus, General Motors, Corvette, and surfboard finishing shops from around the United States.
I've been cutting varieties of Fordite for over 40 years. I only work in material I am sure of its source. Contrary to what had been believed for many years about the unavailability of new rough due to manufacturing changes, there is SOME contemporary Fordite rough that is collected and made available to cutters in small quantities. I have a good stock of rough to work with. Compare my Fordite with others for sale on the internet! Much of it is fake and either "handmade" by just pouring pretty colors of paint together that are clearly not automotive paint colors of ANY era, or they're just striped resin beads made in China and not real Fordite. I grew up in a rock club in Michigan during the 1970's and rockhounds who worked in the auto industry would collect chunks of dried, layered car paint from the paint sheds at least as early as the late 1960's but it was never collected in large quantities. Fordite is built up overspray that has been baked repeatedly making it relatively hard and solid. It was sold at local rock and gem shows as "Fordite, Chryslerite, Buickite, Detroit Agate, etc." Fordite was by far the most common and popular name and today has come to be used for all built up industrial oversprays used in the jewelry trade. Ethical dealers will accurately identify the variety and source of Fordite if they know it.
