Thread: Black hard rubber "ebonite" as scales????

I have a Boker with Vulcanite scales that have turned the brownish-greenish color and a soaking coat of oil and some Renaissance Wax seemed to be be a major improvement.

Originally Posted by RayCover

The reason I ask is that some of the fountain pen restorers have a liquid that "restores" the surface of hard rubber without having to do a bunch of sanding. You put this stuff on and polish the surface. On plain scales you would probably be better off just sanding the surface and polishing but I thought this stuff might be good for checkered or embossed areas you would not want to sand on.... but it only works on Hard Rubber/ebonite.

Of course it only restores the surface. It won't do anything for structural integrity. I will do some more checking and see what I can find out. I have a few razors here I want to clean up and I am pretty sure that the scales are hard rubber. I was hoping for a confirmation that scales were once made of this material. It sounds as if they were made of some version of hard rubber at some point in time.

Ray

We can always try it get the name and let us know

TIA

I have emailed the pen restoration guy who has the stuff. When I get his reply I will pass on the info. as far as how to use it, how well it works and where to get it.

Ray

Well I just got an email back from Richard Binder. Apparently the stuff didn't work as well as I had heard. He told me he was once licensed to use a product called G-10 that was supposed to redye the surface of the ebonite and get rid of the greenish oxidation. He said it didn't work as well as it was supposed to and he doesn't use it anymore in his fountain pen restoration.

Back to the drawing board I guess.

Ray

Ebonite and vulcanite are basically the same thing - rubber hardened with sulphur. Bakelite is something else completely.

Vulcanite is often wrongly called gutta-percha. Gutta Percha is the sap of a tree, a form of natural latex that can be moulded and re-moulded, unlike ebonite/vulcanite which once moulded cannot be heated and remoulded. It was used as early as 1842 and was widespread by the 1850s, finding uses as wire insulation, walking sticks, furniture, firearm grips, golf-balls, etc. Unlike hardened rubber it does not become brittle.

Ebonite was the name Charles Goodyear gave hardened rubber - because it looked like ebony. It was used for instrument mouthpieces, pipes, bowling balls, fountain pens, etc. The sulphur hardens, or 'vulcanizes' it - hence its alternative name of vulcanite (which Goodyear did not like). It discolours over time, becoming yellowish, brown or greenish, and exudes a vapour like sulphur when rubbed. Light discolouration can be restored by using a mildy abrasive cleaner, some deeper discolourations respond well to hot water immersion. It was vulcanized to prevent it from remaining a thermoplastic (ie softening when heated, re-hardening upon cooling) - the process was discovered by Goodyear in 1839.

Bakelite was an early type of plastic, though not the earliest - it was developed in 1907 (some sources say 1909) by Belgian chemist Dr. Leo Baekland. It contained wood milled to a powder, phenol and formaldehyde - the first true synthetic plastic. It is easy to confuse catalin (no wood filler) with it, but catalin came later. Parkesine (1856, though some sources say 1862), xylonite (1869) and celluloid (1870) pre-dated bakelite and are regarded as the first thermoplastics, but unlike the bakelite the origin is a plant fibre - cellulose.

Regards,
Neil