Re: Spud plastic

[Tom Deering <tdeering@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>My call is that the Spuds are bakelite, not styrene as you find in model
>kits. Bakelite is brittle (weapon's grade plastic! :) but quite stable if
>you keep it away from a lot of direct heat. A test is to see if it will
>dissolve or soften with acetone or tolulene. Styrene melts with powerful
>organic solvents, baklelite may soften minutely, but not so's you'd
>notice. Which is why you always, repeat always, rebuild broken bakelite
>with cyanoacrylate cement (superglue) and accelerators not model making
>cement or epoxy. Fixing a bakelite red button viewer with epoxy dooms it
>to look like a piece of ugly junk forever.

Yes, I agree.  Bakelite often breaks so cleanly that a careful application
of super glue is often undetectable.

I think Scientific American did a nice piece on the Dutch chemist that
invented Bakelite.  Around March or so I believe.