Red Fibre

Fairly low pressure actually. Tufnol is squashed enough to make it a strong lamination, but not so much as to start distorting the fabric reinforcement. Compare it to something like Formica, which gets squeezed like an NHS budget with Michael Howard after it.

Tufnol themselves apply the name "Tufnol" to a range of materials, including cotton and paper - but the original was always linen. Now AFAIR linen is generally used because it's more acid-resistant than cotton (but not as much as silk). I wonder if early phenolic resins tended to weep acids with age, as so many early unstable plastics did?

Cellulose fibres (cotton?) and rubber. It's mixed, rolled, then vulcanised. With great age it vulcanises further and goes brittle. They probably stuck wood flour in there sometimes too - they usually did.

Surprisingly I can't find it listed in either Spon or the Chemical Formulary, and the Book Elves have nabbed my copy of Molesworth.

I would guess it began as electrical insulators in the mid 19th. The Victorians made a lot of such things out of rubber, and they happily used some fearsomely toxic solvents to do it.

this versatile and

I thought they were just cardboard with a surface treatment, rather than a resin mixed _in_ with the board?

I've got 1903 references to using "red fibre washers" (implying both the material, and ready made washers of it).

of this versatile and

Probably the *cheap* suitcases were glorified cardboard, the better ones (eg Globe Trotter, IIRC) would have been this sort of vulcanised fibre.

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

I've just had a quick fossick through some old catalogues and even though fibre washers were available in 1904, they were of dimensions not suited to petrol line unions or similar. eg 1/2" were available in thicknesses from .030" through to .375" and diameters through 14".

The eariest listing I have for the automotive type, that we are familiar with,is 1924..

Tom