If this has been discussed before please forgive me, I searched and didn’t see anything like it. The terms Bakelite and Catalin are used a lot in the shaving brush forum and I have gotten more confused about which is which as I read here. I came from the Bakelite radio-collecting world and thought I knew what the differences are. But the terms are used by some people here exactly the opposite that I came to know them in the Bakelite/Catalin radio world so I got curious about exactly what they meant. It can sometimes be a simple semantic issue since we don’t really know what company produced the plastic. But because the two companies produced products that generally varied quite a bit in characteristics, and because it is an interesting bit of history I did some googling to try to find authoritative references.
What is certain is that Leo Baekeland invented what we now call Bakelite around 1907. It was the first synthetic plastic and he named it after himself, and formed a company by the same name. The product, which was a phenol-formaldehyde thermosetting plastic, was first used to make industrial products that required the strength, durability and or electrical insulation that Bakelite is known for. The plastic was reinforced with fillers such as asbestos or cloth fibers. The fillers, and the fact that Bakelite was molded under high pressures (1,000s of lbs inch2 of pressure) and high heat made it very strong and resistant to heat and mechanical wear. The dark resins and fillers made it opaque and the colors used to dye it were generally dark and uniform or a bit mottled.
In 1927, when the original patent expired, the patent was bought by the Catalin Company, which produced a phenolic plastic similar in chemistry, but processed and colored differently. Catalin was cast into lead molds as a liquid and set by baking in an oven. Fillers were not used, giving the final product a translucence used to good effect in jewelry and lighted products. A new class of dyes was used yielding a much broader and brighter palette of colors. Mixing two or more colors or clear into the mold gave the beautiful marbled look that many collectors fancy. The most important difference between Bakelite and Catalin was the lack of fillers and whether it was pressure molded or cast.
Catalin is not as strong as Bakelite and it tends to shrink and crack as it ages when it is in complex and large objects such as radios. The dyes were unstable and present day Catalin colors are quite different than their original forms, sometimes aging to a different color entirely. The butterscotch handles started life out as a cast ivory colored Catalin rod that was machined into its final form. The colored Catalin handles in brushes such as Ever Ready, where cast around a plug mold, when you look at the inside when you are restoring one you can see the plug mold lines and often swirl marks from the flowing liquid resin.
To complicate matters, it seems that the Bakelite Corp. also produced phenolic stock that was cast instead of molded, but perhaps with a limited set of colors, none rivaling the Catalin products. And to confuse even more, other manufacturers produced similar products, albeit in smaller volumes, and bakelite and catalin became generic terms for phenolic plastic made either by molding or casting.
So in terms of shaving brushes, it seems that they are all “Catalin” in that they possess the traits of Catalin produced plastic i.e. they are translucent, brightly colored or white/butterscotch and were cast. I had been calling my butterscotch handles Bakelite thinking that they were opaque and uniform in color and turned from pressure molded rod stock. But, it turns out they are translucent, I just didn’t notice because they are solid and so don’t pass light as easily as the hollow colored handels. Here is a comparison of a couple of colored Ever Ready handles and a (perhaps Vulfix) vintage butterscotch handle lit from below by a flashlight.
View attachment 110256
Clearly the butterscotch on the far right (which was cream colored in the hole when I cleaned it out and sanded it) is translucent, my Bakelite radios do not let any light through at all. The difference in brightness is a function of the exposure time, the butterscotch is much less bright in reality. So I have to conclude that almost all of the brushes we see here are “catalin” regardless of whether they were made by the Catalin company and that true bakelite handles are few and far between, although I have acquired some Bakelite shaving bowls and other accessories. Catalin is a lot prettier than bakelite, in keeping with the art deco era that created it.
All that said, they are functional works of art and it really doesn’t matter what we call them. At least we don’t have to worry about asbestos in the handles we are restoring.
What is certain is that Leo Baekeland invented what we now call Bakelite around 1907. It was the first synthetic plastic and he named it after himself, and formed a company by the same name. The product, which was a phenol-formaldehyde thermosetting plastic, was first used to make industrial products that required the strength, durability and or electrical insulation that Bakelite is known for. The plastic was reinforced with fillers such as asbestos or cloth fibers. The fillers, and the fact that Bakelite was molded under high pressures (1,000s of lbs inch2 of pressure) and high heat made it very strong and resistant to heat and mechanical wear. The dark resins and fillers made it opaque and the colors used to dye it were generally dark and uniform or a bit mottled.
In 1927, when the original patent expired, the patent was bought by the Catalin Company, which produced a phenolic plastic similar in chemistry, but processed and colored differently. Catalin was cast into lead molds as a liquid and set by baking in an oven. Fillers were not used, giving the final product a translucence used to good effect in jewelry and lighted products. A new class of dyes was used yielding a much broader and brighter palette of colors. Mixing two or more colors or clear into the mold gave the beautiful marbled look that many collectors fancy. The most important difference between Bakelite and Catalin was the lack of fillers and whether it was pressure molded or cast.
Catalin is not as strong as Bakelite and it tends to shrink and crack as it ages when it is in complex and large objects such as radios. The dyes were unstable and present day Catalin colors are quite different than their original forms, sometimes aging to a different color entirely. The butterscotch handles started life out as a cast ivory colored Catalin rod that was machined into its final form. The colored Catalin handles in brushes such as Ever Ready, where cast around a plug mold, when you look at the inside when you are restoring one you can see the plug mold lines and often swirl marks from the flowing liquid resin.
To complicate matters, it seems that the Bakelite Corp. also produced phenolic stock that was cast instead of molded, but perhaps with a limited set of colors, none rivaling the Catalin products. And to confuse even more, other manufacturers produced similar products, albeit in smaller volumes, and bakelite and catalin became generic terms for phenolic plastic made either by molding or casting.
So in terms of shaving brushes, it seems that they are all “Catalin” in that they possess the traits of Catalin produced plastic i.e. they are translucent, brightly colored or white/butterscotch and were cast. I had been calling my butterscotch handles Bakelite thinking that they were opaque and uniform in color and turned from pressure molded rod stock. But, it turns out they are translucent, I just didn’t notice because they are solid and so don’t pass light as easily as the hollow colored handels. Here is a comparison of a couple of colored Ever Ready handles and a (perhaps Vulfix) vintage butterscotch handle lit from below by a flashlight.
View attachment 110256
Clearly the butterscotch on the far right (which was cream colored in the hole when I cleaned it out and sanded it) is translucent, my Bakelite radios do not let any light through at all. The difference in brightness is a function of the exposure time, the butterscotch is much less bright in reality. So I have to conclude that almost all of the brushes we see here are “catalin” regardless of whether they were made by the Catalin company and that true bakelite handles are few and far between, although I have acquired some Bakelite shaving bowls and other accessories. Catalin is a lot prettier than bakelite, in keeping with the art deco era that created it.
All that said, they are functional works of art and it really doesn’t matter what we call them. At least we don’t have to worry about asbestos in the handles we are restoring.
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