Milling Celluloid and leaving all the chips on the machine!

I've had to throw away some beautiful old straight razors because the celluloid scales destroyed the blades. We always called it "gassing off", which was attributed to the material breaking down. It can really be pretty stuff, but I won't use it for that reason alone. One razor with rotten celluloid scales can ruin a whole pouch of blades in a hurry.
Can you tell from a pic if the scales are celluloid?
Both are German made.
 

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Can you tell from a pic if the scales are celluloid?
I cannot tell from a picture. But they look like it. It's possible that they are bakelite. I suppose if you could figure out about what time period they were made, that would be your best answer. Or do like he mentioned and rub them hard for a few seconds. Depending on how important the razors are to you, I could only say, better safe than sorry. There are some very talented razor smiths with websites that could rescale them for you in any natural product, or even G10. I used cow horn or G10 for all mine.
 
We still use Nitrocellulose Lacquers and bindings in repairs on guitars and yes it is very flammable and toxic.
Our source in the USA for Celluloid bindings has stopped selling them for this very reason.
I still hold lacquers and celluloid plastic bindings in stock for repairs.
Usually the celluloid gets really granular with age like large sugar crystals and falls apart.
One of the more common repairs with older instruments is to replace the granulated bindings.
Another of the more common repairs is some guitar players have sweat that reacts with the lacquers and when the guitar is put in a rubber coated guitar stand the sweat ,nitrocellulose lacquer and the rubber don't play well together and the rubber burns into the lacquer and makes for some interesting lacquer repairs.
 
One day I milled quite a bit of Celluloid material and left the milling machine table covered with chips.
A few days later while milling some steel some hot chips ignited the Celluloid which burst into flames.
Pretty Crazy how fast it burns. Luckily there was nothing near to catch fire.
And I'm pretty sure the fumes are bad to breath.
Yea I love celluloid... I would plane them with wooden plane when working on some guitars, and light the shavings for fun. It really burns very well, like gasoline. Bet you could use it as propellant or something...

I buy all my celluloid from China because it seems most celluloid is from China now, and that it is literally impossible for me to buy them from the states, considering the hazmat shipping requirement.

I know celluloid is beautiful and all that but surely there are other plastics that can be just as good looking but without it going up like gasoline?
 
Some of the Acrylic Plastics "approach" the beauty of classical cellulose, but they do not match it.
 
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