Thread: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Celluloid (but was afraid to find out...)

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Perhaps sending an inquiry to Thomas @ Revisor ? Or maybe if anyone in the business has access, Heirbert Wacker ? Assuming someone working for Thomas, who was in the business way back when, or Herr Wacker , may recall the process used.

Wacker might be an idea... I did ask Thomas in a roundabout way about the scales a while ago, but I think he buys them in from another supplier, much as they did back in the day, and I didn't really get the answer I was looking for, let alone the name of the supplier!

There must be a few people who just specialise in this sort of work these days, and I guess they supply a number of different makers, as not much other than the forging, grinding and setting-in of the blade seems to be done by the modern suppliers who spring to mind, and their scales all look remarkably the same.

I would suspect in days gone past it was the same - it certainly was in the 1800s when you find people listed as scale makers, horn pressers, and the like. I doubt anyone in the actual razor factories has much of an idea about how the scales or paper boxes are made, as these would be done by others for their own gain in their own factories. Only a few concerns (again, going back to the late 1800s early 1900s) did everything in house.

The same sort of quality you find in vintage scales is not present,however, particularly in those metal bolsters. Vintage ones look the job whilst new ones have a certain air of 'cheapness' about them...

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

The only thing I can find wrong with this is the shrinkage factor. I have seen the stuff made, and it shrinks enormously. The bolsters appear to be pre-drilled or pressed holes, made before attaching to the scales. If so they are gambling with the two scale halves shrinking at exactly the same rate and keeping more or less the same shape, otherwise the holes would not line up.

This has to be correct. The material would have to be hard set prior to drilling holes I would certainly think. The odds of the holes lining up for perfect alignment after any shrinkage are astronomical. We all know how much a tenth of a millimeter can affect our alignment, and we're talking about a piece ~130mm in length, after shrinkage. Would be interesting to know just how much volume is lost during this drying process...

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Maybe the mould itself had 'stubs' that the pre-drilled holes in the metal bolsters fitted onto and which held them in place, but then we have to explain how the metal foil logo was kept in place. Maybe a thin solvent-rich coat of cellulose was dabbed onto the parts, like a thin glue, and this became absorbed into the celluloid once it was pressed.

EDIT: Ah! I understand, what I had typed just now was simply an overly complicated version of what you state above. Brilliance!

Originally Posted by entropy1049

...Would be interesting to know just how much volume is lost during this drying process...

That's a hard one, Mike!

It seems that shrinkage is proportional to the amount of alkali present in the mix, which also introduces the other forms of Cellulose, namely the early (and dangerously explosive) cellulose nitrate which releases nitric gas during breakdown, to its safer alternatives of Cellulose biacetate, cellulose acetate and cellulose triacetate which release acetic acid and give a vinegar smell during breakdown, to a hybrid cellulose actetate nitrate. All of these would have had varying degrees of alkali within them and therefore different shrinkage rates. Shrinkage (and swelling) occur during a transitional phase, and even heat and micro-environmental differences will affect it.

Because a lot of these cellulosic plastics were used in the motion picture industry and the explosive nitrate mixtures and the corrosive acetic acid (vinegar syndrome) acetates had to be overcome, the Eastman-Kodak company ploughed a lot of research, money and man-hours into this. They came up with a water retention rate of 2 to 3 per cent for freshly made cellulosic plastics, which had to be reduced to 0.03% or under for maximum efficiency.

Part of E-As research involved chopping up preformed cellulose films or sheets (they sheet extruded cellulose up to 6inches thick) and putting this through a small bore injector with a heated barrel, heating up the pellets and effectively melting them together before they went into a screw-operated processor. Drying times in dry air (all moisture removed) and slight heating (high heat was never used in case the material deformed) was given as anything between 2 and 8 hours. However, they were making a base for film stock, which is transparent and very thin, so these drying times and possibly the processing methods themselves are not applicable to razor scales.

Which is one of the things that irritate me. people must have been trained in this and it was still in use in the 1950s and later, so we ought to know how it was done - but we do not. We know the general principles of its formation and use, but these are too broad for something as specific as razor scales. With that in mind, there were plenty of thermo-setting plastics, including the original plastic - horn, so there must have been 10s of thousands of dies, presses and moulds - where are they all now? A handful have turned up, notably in France and Solingen, but the American and British cutlery industry was enormous so one would expect at least a few presses, dies, etc to have survived, along with training manuals and old-timers first-hand experiences of using them. The devil is in the detail, and in this case both the devil and the detail are well hidden.

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by entropy1049

...I used to belong to a group who made their own sensitised collodion by nitrating cotton in a nitric acid rich mix of nitric acid and sulphuric acid (horrible stuff as I am sure you know - one in particular is given to sending out clouds of vapour that spills down the sides of the flask)...

This is what any good wet chemist would call a Hot Time on a Saturday Night and would be considered a lot of fun by nerdy guys like me. You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself <wink!>

Came near to it on a couple of occasions. I ran out of 100% certified cotton wool when nitrating cotton to make collodion once and hastily resorted to what were described as 'photographers pure cotton gloves for handling film'. Judging by the billows of thick orange smoke that boiled up into the air, corroding everything it touched, the purity of the gloves was a little questionable.

I used to carry out experiments like this over a photographers sink - about 2 ft 6" wide by 6ft long by 1ft deep - it was filled with water and all I had to do was pull the home made lever that held the tray that held the flasks above the water and the smoke stopped. Luckily my respirator was up to the task - I could hold my breath for a very long time, else bye-bye lung linings.

The dark room was in a room off the bedroom - I had converted it into a lab. My wife went mental when she saw the damage. Well, to be honest she smelled it first, its smell hung in the air for days. It had stripped off the wallpaper and bubbled up the paint. Protestations of a makeover were not even entertained, and that particular avenue of enjoyment was cut off to me, for ever I thought. Until I built the shed, that is.

The explosion in the last shed that lifted the entire roof an inch or two in the air taught me a thing or two:

1. cleat down the roof with stout iron straps and long bolts, and
2. people make an awful big deal out of having eyebrows.

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

That's a hard one, Mike!

It seems that shrinkage is proportional to the amount of alkali present in the mix, which also introduces the other forms of Cellulose, namely the early (and dangerously explosive) cellulose nitrate which releases nitric gas during breakdown, to its safer alternatives of Cellulose biacetate, cellulose acetate and cellulose triacetate which release acetic acid and give a vinegar smell during breakdown, to a hybrid cellulose actetate nitrate. All of these would have had varying degrees of alkali within them and therefore different shrinkage rates. Shrinkage (and swelling) occur during a transitional phase, and even heat and micro-environmental differences will affect it.

Because a lot of these cellulosic plastics were used in the motion picture industry and the explosive nitrate mixtures and the corrosive acetic acid (vinegar syndrome) acetates had to be overcome, the Eastman-Kodak company ploughed a lot of research, money and man-hours into this. They came up with a water retention rate of 2 to 3 per cent for freshly made cellulosic plastics, which had to be reduced to 0.03% or under for maximum efficiency.

Part of E-As research involved chopping up preformed cellulose films or sheets (they sheet extruded cellulose up to 6inches thick) and putting this through a small bore injector with a heated barrel, heating up the pellets and effectively melting them together before they went into a screw-operated processor. Drying times in dry air (all moisture removed) and slight heating (high heat was never used in case the material deformed) was given as anything between 2 and 8 hours. However, they were making a base for film stock, which is transparent and very thin, so these drying times and possibly the processing methods themselves are not applicable to razor scales.

Which is one of the things that irritate me. people must have been trained in this and it was still in use in the 1950s and later, so we ought to know how it was done - but we do not. We know the general principles of its formation and use, but these are too broad for something as specific as razor scales. With that in mind, there were plenty of thermo-setting plastics, including the original plastic - horn, so there must have been 10s of thousands of dies, presses and moulds - where are they all now? A handful have turned up, notably in France and Solingen, but the American and British cutlery industry was enormous so one would expect at least a few presses, dies, etc to have survived, along with training manuals and old-timers first-hand experiences of using them. The devil is in the detail, and in this case both the devil and the detail are well hidden.

Regards,
Neil

Neil, there is so much good information in this post! Some excellent research on your part and some baffling points to ponder! The potential generation of explosive nitrates as side products in the early manufacture of these plastics has always impressed me. Since the origin of celluloid predates the origin of trinitrotoluene, I'd bet there were some catastrophic manufacturing accidents (to wit, explosions) in the early development and manufacture of early plastics that were at the time, quite mysterious and unexplainable.

I find Eastman Kodaks work to reduce the water retention in their celluloid to be a great bit of specific information. Water, as polar as it is, is not something we want mingling with our nitrates if we expect our material to not simply dissolve. The fact that they had to allow their film stock to air dry for 2-8 hours tells us a bit about the times our much thicker razor scales would have taken to become stable enough to handle. We could probably estimate 10-20 times that based on diameter alone in very broad and general terms.

I worry. About a lot of things that probably don't matter to most folks. One of my biggest worries is that every minute, or second for that matter, somebody passes with knowledge that they alone may possess. Lost knowledge is a tragedy of huge magnitude in my opinion. One of my nerdier past-times is operating a huge cross-compound Corliss steam powered pumping engine at a nearby annual event (they can only afford to bring steam up for a week a year ). I've often said, a person could teach a course in thermodynamics and mans quest for perfect Carnot efficiency using that engine alone. This thing was built in the '20's, and attains about 45% Carnot efficiency! Internal combustion engines attain about 15%, and yet, in 1920, these guys were producing the best efficiency numbers for a practical heat engine in human history. The knowledge the designers had about the gas laws as they were still being defined is absolutely mind blowing. Their math was perfect. Their craftsmanship, unreproducible today. We simply don't have the capability to forge castings the size that would be required. And these castings are all finished, the moving bits machined and polished to mirror surfaces, and the sheer number of unnecessary yet beautiful brass accents is astounding and unthinkable today. If you've ever seen Corliss valve gear in motion, you wonder if they had to bring in Swiss watchmakers to time the thing. Those guys were smart, incredibly hard working, and took great pride in the fruits of their efforts. And they're dying every day, taking their knowledge with them.

As to the evidence of their labors, I suspect war time metal drives had lots to do with this. And scrapping in general.

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Came near to it on a couple of occasions. I ran out of 100% certified cotton wool when nitrating cotton to make collodion once and hastily resorted to what were described as 'photographers pure cotton gloves for handling film'. Judging by the billows of thick orange smoke that boiled up into the air, corroding everything it touched, the purity of the gloves was a little questionable.

I used to carry out experiments like this over a photographers sink - about 2 ft 6" wide by 6ft long by 1ft deep - it was filled with water and all I had to do was pull the home made lever that held the tray that held the flasks above the water and the smoke stopped. Luckily my respirator was up to the task - I could hold my breath for a very long time, else bye-bye lung linings.

The dark room was in a room off the bedroom - I had converted it into a lab. My wife went mental when she saw the damage. Well, to be honest she smelled it first, its smell hung in the air for days. It had stripped off the wallpaper and bubbled up the paint. Protestations of a makeover were not even entertained, and that particular avenue of enjoyment was cut off to me, for ever I thought. Until I built the shed, that is.

The explosion in the last shed that lifted the entire roof an inch or two in the air taught me a thing or two:

1. cleat down the roof with stout iron straps and long bolts, and
2. people make an awful big deal out of having eyebrows.

Regards,
Neil

I literally laughed out loud several times reading this. But I must take issue with point number 1 from your "Lessons Learned". LET THE PRESSURE ESCAPE! Remember the Wolfsschanze! Stupid meeting hut...

My Baby in action:

That is one impressive machine Mike - is that you towards the end? I loved all the noise and can just imagine that warm, balmy amosphere that laid a thin film of oil on your skin by the end of the day. There is something solid and real about that sort of thing - it does your soul good.

I used to work by a machine that generated a kind of soporific noise like that, day in, day out. I quit it when I began to form rhythms in the chaotic madness - sometimes I fancied I could hear words and once I swear I heard my mothers voice scream 'Neil!' at me the way she used to when i was a kid and playing up, delighted to be naughty but fearing the wrath of my father when he came home from work. It still makes me laugh the way he used to chase me and catch me by one hand and hold it aloft while trying to smack me with the other as we spiralled round and round, me avoiding the loose hand at all costs. it only made it worse in the end.

The way we hear things (and see things) that are not there has always amazed me. It seems that the brain tries to impart some sort of order to any series of random events. Perhaps it does that as we are in extremis, trying to fend off that dying of the light...

The Wolfs Lair, eh?! I didn't know the roof was blown off, and I used to do a brisk trade in militaria, although I preferred that of WWI to WWII.

Back to the steam engine, you can see the thought that went into making just one small part of it, the way non essential bits were pared down. The rockers that moved the travelling arms up and down or backwards and forwards are good examples. To think that people used to work in amongst all that machinery! I could never do that - not for long anyway. The opportunities to get mangled up look just to great for me to deal with - I fall over concentrating on trying not to fall over...

We used to allow for that principle in building, allowing a 45 degree angle at the footing/plinth for 'shear force' and deeming everything above that as non-essential. We did a lot of elegant work with concrete, stepping it, stub piling supports for it, lining shear faces with polystyrene board to allow slippage to occur - then we covered it all over with gravel and soil and it was rarely, if ever, seen again.

I met old guys in that trade (building, that is - we built up houses from the grassy oversite) who, for instance, would slake a load of lime in an old bath-tub to make lime putty, set a traveller bar up on the ceiling and use the putty and something else (gypsum?) to form the most ornate architraves, all with just a bit of plywood as former moving along the traveller. One had a small hand operated gun that looked all the world like a meat mincer, but which sprayed a decorative, lumpy coating up the wall. The gun looked about as old as him, and he was no spring chicken. They are all dead now, and these days you buy architrave in shops (you did back then, to be honest) and cut it to length then stick it on the wall. Old Cliff the Plasterer would turn in his grave if he saw that... He took a shine to me - I was only a boy then, and I thought he might leave me his tools when he retired. He left them to his 'gofer' or 'plasterers mate' a man he used to hate and wouldn't even speak to. They ate their lunch in complete silence, no small talk. I guess they were like an old married couple who had fallen out of love ages ago but still stuck together because that's the way it always had been.

He did try to teach me a bit, but I was on loan to the roofer and fell off the roof while getting tiles up there. By the time I had recovered he had retired. Another opportunity missed, and the chasm between the old and the new grew that bit wider.

Sorry for the rambling.
Regards,
Neil

That corliss Is amazing,I built a miniture Corliss about 25 yrs ago.took 3 yrs to complete
Was one in the basement of an old hospital down in Santa monica just like in your vid.
The steam engine club I belonged to was offered it for $1.00,just remove it,you can have it.
Far to big an undertaking for us,they ended up cutting it apart for scrap metal

Neil-
Not me, but I can be heard in the background throughout the video, droning on and boring the hell out of some poor sap who was unfortunate enough to ask me a question. He's one of the old fellows who's been volunteering running the machine with my Dad (and I, since leaving the military in 2000). This fellow (John) is at least 80 (he mentioned once he'd entered the Army in 1946 or 47). My own Dad is now 79 and just this spring had a stroke, so his days of sweating it out between those steam chests in late August/early September may be over. We have a thermometer mounted to a valve crossbar. It's routinely at about 130 degrees Fahrenheit. That leaves me, and no help on the horizon...I ask myself, who's going to be there that really understands this thing when I'm not available to run it? Also, I'd like a little help. Days get long when you're standing between two cylinder heads filled with super-heated steam and it's 130 degrees. I've seen what happens when the other old boys die off and no one steps up to run the machine in their stead. It becomes a static exhibit.
I spent one summer as a kid puddling concrete. we were working pouring a floor my first day on the job, me and a few other guys puddling and three fellows finishing. I soon noticed that one finisher was working basically solo, and the other two more together, one following the other very closely. As I couldn't make sense of this after some observation, I finally asked one of the guys who'd done a few summers puddling already just what the deal was. He tells me that's George, who was the bosses dad's finisher for the family business for 40 years or so, and had over the years developed an over appreciation for Old John Barleycorn, and as a result, suffered from tremors continuously. Instead of sending him packing, the owner simply hired another finisher to follow behind George and finish his mistakes. I instantly admired the owner a bit more (having previously been convinced he was an Imp of Satan).

Pixelfied-
That's actually how we obtained this engine. Midwest Old Settlers and Threshers Association was offered the engine by the city of Marshalltown, Iowa for the princely sum of one dollar. Fortunately for us, one of the active volunteers at the time was the owner of the largest wrecker and crane service in Iowa . When those fellows moved that engine, they disassembled it to each individual piece. when they reassembled it in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, they cycled the valve gear by hand a few times, set it by using their heads, applied steam, and found that the valve timing was almost perfect. Amazing. It will pump 700 gallons of water up a 100 foot head per minute. I'll let the physics nerds calculate the Horsepower (Hint: it's over 600). The engine ran every second of every day for nearly 50 years, except 12 hours every New Years Day when it was stopped to allow maintenance. But on the pump. The engine never required any. Keep her lubed, keep her filled with dry steam, and I believe it would easily do another 50 years continuously. I've seen the main journal bearings. I would describe them as "nicely broken in". Not even kidding. By the way, the electric motors that replaced the engine in 1970 had burned out and been sent to the rewind shop three times in the first two years of their service.
I've heard tales like yours before though, sadly. Too much of the good stuff goes away because there's no one who appreciate its true value to say, "Wait a second here...!"

Oh! And THREAD OFFICIALLY DERAILED!

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

I used to work by a machine that generated a kind of soporific noise like that, day in, day out. I quit it when I began to form rhythms in the chaotic madness - sometimes I fancied I could hear words

So help, if I'm lyin' I'm diein' ....... my refrigerator kicks on, or my AC and I hear music, usually Black Gospel ....... not kidding, I love the old '50s stuff and have listened to it enough to play it in my head. Swan Silvertones, Soul Stirrers, Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi.

I'll be sitting in my lazy boy with my feet cranked up, or at the computer, and when one of those motors is running I'll hear music and lyrics in a subtle drone. Sort of as if it was coming through the wall, my neighbor playing it. This has been going on the past few years of the 10 I've lived here. Sort of like the tinnitus I've had for the past 30+ years, I'm used to it and I'm only rarely conscious of the birds chirping.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

So help, if I'm lyin' I'm diein' ....... my refrigerator kicks on, or my AC and I hear music, usually Black Gospel ....... not kidding, I love the old '50s stuff and have listened to it enough to play it in my head. Swan Silvertones, Soul Stirrers, Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi.

I'll be sitting in my lazy boy with my feet cranked up, or at the computer, and when one of those motors is running I'll hear music and lyrics in a subtle drone. Sort of as if it was coming through the wall, my neighbor playing it. This has been going on the past few years of the 10 I've lived here. Sort of like the tinnitus I've had for the past 30+ years, I'm used to it and I'm only rarely conscious of the birds chirping.

Do you smell bacon as well? <stroke joke>

THAT my friend, is unusual. But then again when my toaster pops I hear "Cherry Ball Blues" by Skip James...