Micarta the wonder material

Yep, Westinghouse invented the stuff for a non-conductive material in electrical devices.
 
one of the places for scrap micarta in our area is Wichita Kansas"the yard" which is disposal from the aircraft builders. Most is the brown micarta which makes nice handles but it is available in 12 by 12 pieces.
 
I love micarta. It's old enough that it can give a knife a retro sort of feel. At least some of the old natural canvas micarta seems that way to me.

I had a friend on Maui- in a side room of his smith shop, he had a couple slabs of brown canvas micarta. They were about the size of a full sheet of plywood apiece, and 3" thick. He had to move them with a block and tackle or a tractor. He'd been using one of the slabs for knives, etc. for years but had only cut out about 1/8" of it. He'd hack chunks out by multiple passes with a circular saw. He gave me a big chunk as a gift. I'm still using it.

He got it some where on Oahu, shipyards or government/military surplus or salvage. He also had a really nice 250# Little Giant power hammer in that barn...
 
argel55 said:
one of the places for scrap micarta in our area is Wichita Kansas"the yard" which is disposal from the aircraft builders. Most is the brown micarta which makes nice handles but it is available in 12 by 12 pieces.
Click to expand...

I love the Yard Store! and the Spirit surplus out on 47th (used to be Boeing surplus) even though that place is only open on Wednesdays.
 
They use it on gulfstream aircraft as brackets for hydraulic lines. I find nice little scale sized pieces on the regular
 
I'll have to check out the radio use of linen/phenolic resin circuit boards .Of course commercial radio started in the 1920s so that's after the Wright brothers !!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite
1907 is the start and then called bakelite !
 
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