Aw, c'mon! If it's not an ugly brown, then it's not bakelite! (Just kidding) BTW there's an interesting story behind the guy who invented Bakelite, Leo Baekeland. See URLs:
If you want to fake bakelite, Vauxhall Brazil Brown is a good colour match.
Yup, if inaccurate. Bakelite was not the first plastic, but I'm damned if I can remember the name of it... the first one was mainly used to make billiard balls, and believe it or not it was explosive! So when one ball was slammed into another there'd be a BANG.... there are newspaper reports from the time of some guy who bought these much cheaper plastic balls only to find his customers would all draw their guns every time a match was played! Too funny.
Still cant remember the name tho... I guess the plastics industry has never had a good name huh.
Regards, NT
I believe you're referring to nitrocellulose. In some formulations it's a pretty tough plastic, in others it's an unstable explosive. Used to be used for playing cards and motion-picture film stock as well as for billiard balls.
I remember reading a bit in a Ripley's Believe It Or Not collection many years ago, about a prisoner in France (I think?) back a century or so, awaiting execution, who decided to cheat the executioner out of spite. He requested a set of playing cards (which he knew were nitrocellulose-based), shredded them up, stuffed them into a hunk of metal pipe he tore out of the cot in his cell, plugged the ends with lengths of broom handle, and heated the pipe over a candle while leaning right next to it. After a few minutes, KABOOM! He was just as dead, of course, but chose suicide over execution.
Might have actually happened, might just be a story.
The use of nitrocellulose-based film stock has been a real problem for Hollywood film archivists. A lot of the films made in the very early days of the motion-picture industry were made on this stuff... it's deteriorated in storage to the point where it's very difficult to play, and also quite unstable. I believe there have been some significant incidents involving severe fires (dunno about explosions but it doesn't seem unlikely).
Originally, rayon was heavily nitrated cotton (60-80% nitrocellulose), until the British gov't reduced the maximum allowable nitration to sth like 15% after a girl was immolated by the touch of a cigar at a dance. Rayon lost its characteristic rustle, and with it, its cachet.
A short history of mnanufactured fibers makes no mention of this.
As far as I know, cotton is much more flammable than synthetic fibers.
BTW, my dictionary defines immolation as offering in sacrifice. It says nothing about the method used for making that sacrifice.
Still used as the major resin in wood lacquers. Flexibility makes it superior to acrylic resins, since wood expands and contracts with changes in humidity.
fibers.
My dictionary says ".....especially by burning".
Regards Ian
In article , Ian snipped-for-privacy@agilent.com mentioned...
In any case, it was a poor choice of words for the original post.
Martin
Ok, so the highly flammable stuff was called Chardonnay Silk, not rayon, but was the same basic stuff, nitrated cellulose. The safer replacement was called art silk (artificial silk), trade name Rayon.
Why do some people think they have a responsibility to correct everyone and quibble about their language? Was my colorful use of "immolate" likely to cause anyone to misunderstand? I really don't get it with these self-aggrandising fools.
It's nearly colorless in its raw state
-- -john
~~~~~~~~ Maybe I should ask Radio Shack. They claim they've got answers; but frankly, if Radio Shack were our provider, we'd _really_ be in trouble now, wouldn't we? ~~~~~~~~
So, logically speaking, nitrocellulite would be good for blow-up dolls? ;->
-- -john
~~~~~~~~ "When the world was flat as a pancake, Mona Lisa was happy as a clam." - John Prine ~~~~~~~~
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