Anyone worked with "Graffite"? Casting tips??

[Fixall]

I picked up this beautiful slab of material called "Graffite".

Basically some Seattle graffiti artists were tired of the surfaces they were painting being bumpy from decades of spray/household paint, so they painstakingly chiseled it off... So they could repaint the areas, lol. I'm from the Seattle area, so I thought it was a pretty cool find.

I was thinking the best option to work with it would probably be to cut it into slabs and then cast it in resin. Has anyone done this before?

Does anyone have some really good tips for working with resin, or suggestions of what to use?

I figured I'd probably pick up some of the Rockler kits silicone molds and maybe the mixing cups/sticks.

 

[Lorien]

that's cool as hell!
I don't know about making a handle from it, who knows what kind of inclusions that stuff has! It's not like the wall is cleaned between spray bombs- there could be all kinds of things; urine, vomit, blood and worse sandwiched in there

just having it perched on the mantle would be awesome enough, it's super interesting looking on its own imo

 

[Fixall]

that's cool as hell!
I don't know about making a handle from it, who knows what kind of inclusions that stuff has! It's not like the wall is cleaned between spray bombs- there could be all kinds of things; urine, vomit, blood and worse sandwiched in there

just having it perched on the mantle would be awesome enough, it's super interesting looking on its own imo

Haha, definitely something to think about, lol! It’s at least tested for lead.

It would be more for collector slipjoint covers than anything. I’ve seen it used for rings and pen blanks a bit. I figure if I stabilized “Fordite” can be used for covers, then it might be possible with some resin casting.

 

[Lorien]

the way I think I'd do it would be to shape that material to a little smaller than final tolerance and then paint layers of 2 part epoxy over it until it had a fairly thick skin, then work it back down from there

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

It has many names. The auto industry has "produced" this material for 100 years.
It is called Fordite by many folks, and has other assembly plant location specific names.
Fordite is the buildup of paint layers on the skids that take the auto bodies through the paint booths as well as the areas that build up the excess spray. It has to be chipped off every so often. I just received several pieces from a member here. In my early days at Ford, it was rock hard enamel and we made jewelry cabochons from it. Now it is acrylic and a bit less durable, but still very pretty.