Arden Pen Co / Resources / Fordite
Material guide 03
Fordite
Sixty years of car paint, baked hard and sliced through. What it is, where each type comes from, and why no two pieces can ever match.
Fordite isn't a stone and the earth had nothing to do with it. It's hardened car paint — the accidental, gorgeous rubbish that built up in factory spray booths back when bodies were painted by hand.
How it happened
In the hand-spray era, car bodies rode through the paint bays bolted to steel skids and racks. Every body that passed got its colour; every skid alongside caught the overspray. Then the whole lot went through the curing ovens and baked hard. Next body, next colour, next bake — over and over, for years, until the build-up got thick enough to foul the line and someone had to chip it off and skip it.
Somewhere along the way a worker noticed that a cross-section through the stuff looked uncannily like banded agate, and started taking pieces home. Hence the other names it goes by: Detroit agate, Motor City agate, paint rock, paint slag.
It is no longer being made. Modern plants use electrostatic spraying, which puts almost all the paint on the car and almost none on the surroundings. Every piece in existence is a relic of a manufacturing method that has gone.
The main types
| Type | Where from | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Classic Fordite | Ford, River Rouge | The original. Muted period colours, fine layering |
| Corvettite | Bowling Green, Kentucky | The prize. Vivid reds, yellows and blues |
| Jeepite | Toledo, Ohio | Bold, high-contrast colour blocks |
| Chryslerite | Chrysler plants | Rich metallics, often deep in tone |
| Kenworth | Truck plants | Heavier industrial layering |
| Garbage truck | Heil Environmental | Unpromising name, spectacular material |
| Fire truck | Emergency vehicle plants | Dense reds and whites |
| Surfite | Surfboard workshops | Not automotive, but the same principle |
The four patterns
Regardless of where it came from, fordite tends to cut into one of four looks. You can ask for a type in the configurator, or leave it to me.
- Type 1 — grey primer between each colour, giving crisp, distinct stripes.
- Type 2 — colour straight onto colour, no primer. Rich and saturated.
- Type 3 — swirled and dripped, where the paint ran before it set. The most dynamic.
- Type 4 — pitted and bleeding, layers breaking into one another. Organic and unpredictable.
What it's like to own
Hard, stable and glassy once polished — it behaves much like a cast acrylic in daily use, and needs no more care than a wipe with a cloth. It is heavier than timber, so a fordite pen has noticeable heft.
The thing to understand is that the pattern is only revealed at the moment of turning. I can tell you roughly what a piece will give, but nobody knows precisely what's in there until it's on the lathe. That's the whole appeal, and it's also why I can't make you a second one to match.
British fordite
Almost all fordite on the market is American, which has always struck me as odd given we built cars here for a century. Longbridge, Cowley, Solihull, Castle Bromwich — all of them sprayed bodies by hand for decades, and all of that material went somewhere.
I'm actively looking. If you worked in a British paint shop, or know someone who did, I would genuinely love to hear from you.