Thread: Some advice please - suspect cell rot

If I had a shop, I would be tempted to rescale any celluloid that didn't look good (either from fading or warping) just to be on the safe side.
When they first started using celluloid, they were probably all talking about how much better it was than the old horn scales that were prone to insect damage and delaminating.

Lemme see if I remember what Neil Miller said......

Cellulose Acetate....Good.
Cellulose Nitrate....Bad.

At least I think that is how it went. When making them, there were frequent fires and explosions. I recall that a maker (Case?) had the building with hinges on the roof so as it blew, they could just close it again.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Lemme see if I remember what Neil Miller said......

Cellulose Acetate....Good.
Cellulose Nitrate....Bad.

At least I think that is how it went. When making them, there were frequent fires and explosions. I recall that a maker (Case?) had the building with hinges on the roof so as it blew, they could just close it again.

Kind of like the munitions factories that had giant slides for evacuating the control rooms in case reactions went south.

I guess they just recognized that some things were just inevitable.

In my experience, it’s typically the transparent celluloids that are most likely to be a problem as the pigments used to make them opaque stabilzed the worst of the reactivity. You can really see this in action on the celluloid versions of tortoiseshell, where the razors will have rust spots in the shape of the transparent parts of the scales.

It gets complicated though because not all the transparent plastics that were used were celluloid. Some were lucite, some bakelite. Only celluloid scales are a problem.

While I don’t really think of the ‘french ivory’, or the opaque yellow, as being prone to acidic outgassing, it’s still certainly possible and I’d err on the side of caution and replace them.