Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Treloar's great book - now in my collection

This book, long out of print, is still THE monograph about rubber.

It goes over my head in many ways, but my physicist brother will explain the "mystical" parts, hopefully.

I paid about 7 Euros for it, plus P+P. It came from the library of a college in London. The library reg card is still in it. It has been issued about 55 times in roughly 35 years, and must have been read countless times in the library itself.

I love old books like this, especially when they deal with slingshot related stuff :)

What piqued my interest was Treloar's chapter regarding the swelling effect of rubber soaked in certain liquids - they obviously change their nature when "swolen". Will it improve power, stretch, speed? I have to find out.




2 comments:

  1. Looks interesting! I can see some scientific slingshots coming up!

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  2. Joerg, my late father was a US champion rubber powered plane designer in the 1930's. Later he was an aerospace engineer. He told me th get better performance out of rubber bands for flight they coated them with castor oil. I don't know if this improved stretch or simply reduced friction on the intense twisting that they did to the bands. It should be s simple matter to try, if it is available in Germany.

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