Pietenpol-List: Mosquito glue...?
Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2001 1:52 pm
Original Posted By: "Greg Cardinal"
As is usually the case, I dredged the type of glue up from memory and whensomeone gives another answer it makes me wonder if I've had a seniormoment. So I dug thru the reference books and found "Mosquito" byBill Sweetman and illustrated by Rikyu Watanabe which was laterincorporated into "The Great Book of World War II Airplanes" and found:"Production in Australia and Canada was adversely affected by the onlymajor technical problem to hit the Mosquito. As soon as the position inEurope had become more favoruable to the Allies, consideration was givento the durability of the Mosquito structure in the tropics. It soon becameclear that casein glue was a potential disaster; as mentioned above, it isclosely related to cheese, and like cheese it is susceptible tomicro-organicattack under warm, moist conditions. Time-expired Camembert, whichrotten casein glue sometimes resembles, is not a good structural material.The search for a synthetic replacement for casein was long and difficult asthe strong synthetic glues available at that time required either heat andpressure treatment or destructive acid catalysts (the later problemcontributed to the failure of Dr. Kurt Tank's Ta 154 "Moskito" woodenfighter. Finally, urea-formaldehyde glues were found to be an acceptablesubstitute, using a system whereby the hardner was painted on one faceof the joint and the glue on another. Nevertheless, some casein-gluedMosquitos were used in the tropics, resulting in at least one fatal accidentin October 1944 and a spate of groundings. According to ProfessorJ.E. Gordon, who worked on the glue problems at the Royal AircraftEstablishment, rumour had it that some casein-glued aircraft in the tropicswere held together by the small nails used to hold the parts together whilethe glue set. "In most cases this was slander," the scientist wrote later,"but I have seen instances where it was not far from the truth."Casein glue is interesting in that it was used in ancient Egypt and then was"lost" until 1800 when it was rediscovered by German and Swisscarpenters.Not being familiar with Aerolite glue I wonder if it is a urea-formaldehydethat is applied by putting the hardner on one part and the glue on the otherpart of the pieces to be bonded together.RodgerPiet in progress________________________________________________________________________________Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 14:26:41 -0600
As is usually the case, I dredged the type of glue up from memory and whensomeone gives another answer it makes me wonder if I've had a seniormoment. So I dug thru the reference books and found "Mosquito" byBill Sweetman and illustrated by Rikyu Watanabe which was laterincorporated into "The Great Book of World War II Airplanes" and found:"Production in Australia and Canada was adversely affected by the onlymajor technical problem to hit the Mosquito. As soon as the position inEurope had become more favoruable to the Allies, consideration was givento the durability of the Mosquito structure in the tropics. It soon becameclear that casein glue was a potential disaster; as mentioned above, it isclosely related to cheese, and like cheese it is susceptible tomicro-organicattack under warm, moist conditions. Time-expired Camembert, whichrotten casein glue sometimes resembles, is not a good structural material.The search for a synthetic replacement for casein was long and difficult asthe strong synthetic glues available at that time required either heat andpressure treatment or destructive acid catalysts (the later problemcontributed to the failure of Dr. Kurt Tank's Ta 154 "Moskito" woodenfighter. Finally, urea-formaldehyde glues were found to be an acceptablesubstitute, using a system whereby the hardner was painted on one faceof the joint and the glue on another. Nevertheless, some casein-gluedMosquitos were used in the tropics, resulting in at least one fatal accidentin October 1944 and a spate of groundings. According to ProfessorJ.E. Gordon, who worked on the glue problems at the Royal AircraftEstablishment, rumour had it that some casein-glued aircraft in the tropicswere held together by the small nails used to hold the parts together whilethe glue set. "In most cases this was slander," the scientist wrote later,"but I have seen instances where it was not far from the truth."Casein glue is interesting in that it was used in ancient Egypt and then was"lost" until 1800 when it was rediscovered by German and Swisscarpenters.Not being familiar with Aerolite glue I wonder if it is a urea-formaldehydethat is applied by putting the hardner on one part and the glue on the otherpart of the pieces to be bonded together.RodgerPiet in progress________________________________________________________________________________Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 14:26:41 -0600