Layers of Car Paint Used for Jewellery

Jewellery designer and maker Cindy Dempsey, has had a love and an interest for this material since the 70s.  It is called Motor Agate but that she calls Fordite.  This is where it comes from...  In the early days of car manufacturing, when they were painted, excess paint would collect on the floor and then it would get backed with the car, to dry the paint on it.  This would happen time after time with each layer backed again and again.  When the paint accumulation and started getting in the way, the workers would have to remove it and throw it way.  As you can appreciate, it was something that they put off as much as they could as it was a tedious job.  Someone then saw the potential of this material and eventually groups of people, started touring car manufacturers offering to clean this by-product of car building.  Now, that supply has gone, because cars are painted using an electrostatic method, that does not create waste paint. We have shown examples of this car paint rock formations in the article, which make these beautiful and unique jewellery designs.  They also produce Cabochons (a stone polished but not cut into facets) which we have shown at the end of the article.