Fordite and the Midas Touch

The adventure started when my son decided to take blacksmith lessons. We got him a 3 burner forge for Christmas, and the rest of the family picked up the apron, tongs, and hammer. The final piece of the setup was an anvil. We decided to try and find a used anvil to save a couple bucks as a good new anvil is really expensive, yes there are cheap ones available online but you get what you pay for and the reviews were suspect at best. Anvils are not rare in antique stores but they know the value of a good piece of steel. The first stop had 2, $500 and $650, not that bad but we were looking for a deal. More antique stores and flea markets, $450, $750, $1200, it wasn't looking good. Finally we stopped at an auction house that looked more like a trash heap. Then we spotted it, Midas, sitting in a pile of scrap metal. This was possibly the dirtiest piece of metal I have ever seen, so we asked about price and they said $50 bucks. Now that's a deal, or was it a steal? Felt real nice saving that #pimp.
This is Midas after a good cleaning, looks pretty sweet for a 111 year old anvil and vice.

While we were digging through piles of just about anything you can imagine @madame-cyntaia spotted another magic find, Fordite, also known as Detroit Agate. Fordite was formed in the hayday of American auto manufacturing, it formed as layers of paint over spray landed on the factory floors. New painting tech starting in the 80's stopped the formation of Fordite, so there is only a small supply of original material. Fordite will almost always have layers of primer, a dead giveaway that its actually original. These are a couple nice chunks of rough Fordite.

Here I have prepared a couple slices to make cabochons, even though they are from the same rough there are many different color layers so each is unique.

Here are some examples of finished cabochons I have made with this material.

If you would like to see more of my cabochons and faceted gemstones you can check them out at auxarcgems.com.