Warbird Information Exchange

Aerolite is not red-brown. It is, if you will pardon my imagry, about the color and consistency of semen.

You're think of Resorcinol, which is red-brown.

Trust me. I built an airplane using Aerolite.

You are correct sir. Cascophen is what's on my shelf.

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

I am certainly no expert but I do consider myself a student of WWII aviation. I am kind of leery about anyone who refers to themselves as an expert.

I am under the impression that Phenolic and Micarta are pretty close to the same thing. They can use the same resins and fabric substrates and are formed with heat under pressure. From my limited experience with WWII parts and manufacturing research I think they are pretty interchangeable. They also have the same reddish brown appearance just like what can be seen in pulleys, helmet liners and in Paul's awesome radome dig find.

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Phenolic is the resin used to bond the fabric, Micarta is the name used for the finished composite of fabric and resin. Phenolic resin without fabric is essentially Bakelite which was one of the first commercially successful plastics, some of my old Heathkits were housed in Bakelite cases.

Tom-

Typical Micarta laminates used cotton fabric, not glass fabric. Phenolic resin needs to be cured at elevated temperatures and pressures (to reduce porosity) whereas the advantage of polyester resins in that era is that they cured at room temperature so high temperature platens or molds were not required.

I suspect the use of phenolic resins for fairings (like some Corsair wingtips?) was to conserve aluminum or to reduce manufacturing labor.