Featured Weird plastic? Necklace

You can see that the links of the chain have been made by bending the material. Don't think this is possible with Bakelite-type polymers, but seen a lot with Celluloid & similar. It occurs to me that a couple or three years ago, when I did some reading up on Celluloid, it mentioned that one use was for cue balls, & they have to be dense & heavy.

 

Those chains were always celluloid even if they had Bakelite pendants.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I remember it is not good to get celluloid wet. If you want to try a smell test, put the piece is a sealed baggie and place that in hot water.

Also never, ever do a hot pin test on celluloid, it is highly flammable!

 

When I was reading up on Celluloid, one source, which I have never been able to find again of course, said it was developed when some chemical manufacturer had excess supply of an explosives component after the war it had been made for ended. Kaboom!

 

with all these Ebay sellers wrong descriptions... I won't ever trust you from now!

 

I've spoken to my dad who was a research chemist and he's fairly convinced it's all celluloid. As Bronwen mentioned above it got used to make billiard balls as there was a perceived shortage of Ivory. It seems a $10,000 reward ( huge amount of money then)was offered to anyone who could come up with a material that had the same quality of rebound that ivory had.
They did and it was celluloid. Apparently the big problem was the occasional explosion when two balas collided with enough force.
So long answer short, yes the pendant could be celluloid too.

 

What the heck is a 'balas'?!. Balls I meant!. Damn autocorrect

 

Bad celluloid

 

Here's some interesting info from a guitar site - their take on celluloid:

Lashings

 

Joolies sometimes call that "celluloid disease", i.e. when it starts cracking and falling apart. The beaded part of the bag is probably fine, but the hardware is toast.

 

Everything (almost) I know about jewellery made from early plastics. Most of the time I'm not very trusting.