Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2004-12-01 21:41
John Stackpole wrote "Bakelite, as I recall, [Bakelite] is/was very brittle - I trust your "near-Bakelite" clarinet doesn't share that property.
As a child I had access to bakelite sheets of many thickness, both reinforced an non-reinforced.
Yes, it was brittle in the technical sense that rubber is brittle - the material fractures before it suffers any significant PERMANENT distortion in shape.
However I could bend those sheets a long way without them snapping. It was a difficult material to snap. I doubt that the force the material could withstand without damage was any less than vulcanised rubber or ABS.
Yes, it was possible to fracture one of those old telephones, but it needed a pretty good impact, and the plastic was a lot thinner for most of the phone, than the walls of a clarinet.
I know I have worked on clarinets which had the characteristic smell (when worked) of phenol resin, of which Bakelite is one. They had an enduring, shiny, black surface, typical of Bakelite, and certainly not indicative of ageing hard rubber, which turns dull and green (and smelly). I do not recall what make these clarinets were, but they the material was not ABS, and did not have the characteristics of hard rubber, which was very common for the early Chinese instruments - brand names Lark & Hsinghai.
So far I have not noted any authoritative statement of just what type of polymer Resonite was, yet I have noted an increasing ASSUMPTION that it was hard rubber. Are there any grounds yet for this assumption.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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