WATCH STORY
Ocean Crawler Explains Whether Fordite Dials Can Take Daily Wear
The answer is less about the paint itself than the watch case built around it.
Image: Oceancrawler
Ocean Crawler’s fordite durability guide answers a key question: Can decades old Detroit car paint hold up on a wrist?
Fordite is cured automotive paint that built up in layers on Detroit assembly line equipment in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Electrostatic painting later replaced the process, so usable fordite comes from a finite supply.
That scarcity is the point for collectors, but it is also the risk.
Ocean Crawler’s answer is not that fordite is tough. It is that the dial sits under a crystal and inside a sealed case, shielding it from fingers, water and impacts.
Ocean Crawler says every model undergoes ten drop tests and a 6,000 G impact check before launch. The brand says its Core Diver fordite watches are tested to 600 meters of water resistance.
The guide references ISO 6425, which includes a shock test: a one meter fall onto hardwood. Ocean Crawler also gives sapphire a Mohs hardness of 9.
For use, the guide puts handwashing, rain, sweat, office wear, gym sessions and lake or pool swimming in the low risk column. Heat from saunas or a hot dashboard, and impacts onto tile or concrete, move into more careful territory.
The useful takeaway is narrow: a protected fordite dial is being presented as daily wearable, but the raw paint remains the delicate part of the watch.
Source: oceancrawler.com
Why this watch, on this wrist?