Ah - something I can do some educated speculation on:<br><br><< that the scales of a Victorinox were (originally, at least) made of some plastic/celluloid/something that burned VERY brightly >><br><br>That very well could be on the older knives. My guess would be nitrocellulose-based plastic - one of the first commercially used plastics. It persevered up to the early 50's as film stock (although production of nitrocellulose-based film ceased during the 40s), which was the source of some horriffic movie theater fires. (We use "safety film", an acetate-type IIRC, today) To this day, historically significant motion pictures are still shown - on the nitrocellulose based film - and the projection booth requirements for showing these films are quite interesting - an entire sub-section of fire/building/life-safety codes deal with the safe projection of these motion pictures.<br><br>Yes - same basic substance as single base smokless gunpowder. It is STILL in use today - as a lacquer / dope (depending on application) for certain, and perhaps for other applications. I always get best finishes with "nitro-dope". Nobel was the major producer in Europe for quite some time - and may still be. I'm skeptical of the "bright flame" part of the claim wrt signaling - do an open burn of some single-base smokeless powder (outside! carefully!) to get a general idea (it will be a little faster due to grain size, but the flame characteristic is the same - a old single-base cannon powder kernal or 4.2" (107mm) mortar charges for a more accurate model.)<br><br>Here is an excerpt from the Du Pont site:<br><br>"In addition to explosives, experiments revealed that a combination of nitrated cotton or wood pulp with ether and alcohol produced a non-explosive solution that hardened into a film. This discovery led to a wide array of end uses for nitrocellulose including plastics, lacquers and photographic film. Following the 1902 change in management at DuPont, the company looked to diversify into these new end uses for excess nitrocellulose production. In 1904 DuPont bought the International Smokeless Powder and Chemical Company which, in addition to smokeless powder, produced nitrocellulose lacquers. The 1910 purchase of the Fabrikoid Company brought DuPont into the production of artificial leather for the automobile industry. Acquisition of nitrocellulose-based companies was capped by the 1915 purchase of the Arlington Company, a manufacturer of pyroxylin plastics. DuPont continued to improve these products and develop new ones like Duco, a durable nitrocellulose lacquer that revolutionized the automotive finish business. The company first moved beyond nitrocellulose-based products in 1917 when it purchased the Harrison Brothers Paint Company. Thereafter, DuPont increasingly directed its diversification efforts into new chemical research for industrial and consumer products."<br><br>As for J-B Weld - fantastic stuff; not the garden-variety epoxy - and it has a 15 hour cure time at "normal" room temperatures. I keep/use it for various metal bonding tasks. I have no idea at all if it will bond to a hard plastic, as I use a specialty variant of a 5 minute epoxy for those tasks. Since I have J-B Weld on hand AND I have a spare Victorinox SAK with one scale off, I will endeavor a test and report back. (I was curious about making some modifications to a SAK a few months ago and prised off a scale - just haven't gotten around to fixing it)<br><br>Hope this didn't put everyone back to sleep this morning...<br><br>Tom<br><br>
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