What is the difference between "plastic" and "resin" or "celluloid"

[QM2]

As others have said, resin and celluloid are subtypes of the general category of plastic.

 

RESIN

 

Technically, the word "resin" actually refers to an organic substance made of hardened tree sap, used often in the art supplies industry. What pen manufacturers mean by this term however, is "synthetic resin," which can refer to almost any modern plastic that is produced via hardening a liquid substance. Some pen manufacturers have proprietary recipes for this (synthetic) resin, such as Montblanc's "precious" resin, which is commonly believed to contain glass, and Visconti's "vegetal," which contains an organic, plant-based component. Acrylic is also a type of (synthetic) resin that many pen companies use, probably the most common.

 

Benefits of resin: It tends to be a more stable and durable plastic than celluloid, allows for more colour possibilities, and is less costly to produce

 

Let-downs of resin: It has limitations in terms of depth of colour and visual texture, and can have what is subjectively described as a "cheap feel" to it; users who dislike it, describe it as a "cold" and "dead" material.

 

 

CELLULOID

 

As Hari explained, there are two types of celluloid: Cellulose Nitrate and Cellulose Acetate. Cellulose Nitrate is the first plastic to be used with commercial success, in the late 1920s. It differs from "resin", mainly in that resin is made of more contemporary, safer ingredients. Cellulose Acetate is a later celluloid, that was developed to address some of the problems and dangers associated with the original material. Due to the difference in ingredients, the look and feel of resins and celluloids are said to differ in a variety of subtle ways that are highly subjective. In general, celluloids are perceived as more prestigious in the fountain pen community, because of their association with "vintage quality". For this reason, as well as for the difficulty of manufacturing this material today (and therefore its comparative rarity), modern celluloid pens usually cost more than resin pens. Celluloid is perceived as a "special" material, a material for aficionados.

 

Benefits of celluloid: Lovers of celluloid report subjective qualities that are judged as superior to resin, including greater "depth" of colour, a sense of warmth to the touch, and overall "personality". Subjective feelings of celluloid as an expensive, quality material are reported. This is more true of the original cellulose nitrate than of the newer cellulose acetate.

 

Let-downs of celluloid: Cellulose nitrate is an extremely flammable, toxic, and otherwise dangerous material. Due to this, most developed nations now have laws against its manufacture. However, it can still be imported. In addition, pens made of cellulose nitrate are prone to horrific discolouration, structural warping, decomposition, and other forms of distortion, more so than almost any other pen material I can think of. With cellulose acetate, most of these problems have been resolved, but at the proportional expense of the positive attributes associated with celluloid (depth, warmth, etc). In fact, many celluloid lovers do not even consider the acetate variety to be "real" celluloid.

 

All right, I believe that this about sums it up, if rather crudely. If you need more details, simply look up the terms mentioned here on Google and you will get all the statistics and formulas you can ever want.

 

Hope this helps,

QM2

 

 

Edited April 2, 2009 by QM2

[BladeArcher]

QM2,

Thank you very much. This is exactly what I was looking for. It puts into perspective the various kinds of materials used to make these pens, why those materials are more or less desirable (in themselves, rather than because of marketing hype), and why one might pay a preium for one kind over another.

 

Regards,

Blade

 

[LedZepGirl]

Celluloid is made of nitrated cellulose fibers that come from trees and other plants, in the form of high quality dissolving grade pulps- I learned that in my paper class last semester and that's about where my knowledge of it ends. I need to look into it more.

[MDI]

Some of the "benefits" to celluloid (the kind that some vintage pens could be made of), as opposed to modern pen plastics (or resins, if you like), are that it is: (1) old, which makes it automatically better and more desirable than today's stuff, think vintage, (2) no longer made, a huge plus in itself, (3) dangerous--who can so no to that?, (4) fragile, i.e., simply precious, a material that requires special care, (5) illegal to produce [in some places], which means exclusivity, (6) subjectively is hyped up to be "superior" in colour translucency (or what have you), which is irrelevant for some black pens, (7) other similar reasons that make sense in terms of value and collecting, but absolutely not in terms of material science, or actual fitness to a particular purpose. Collecting and using are completely different things when it comes to pens, I guess, and that affects modern manufacturing and advertising of modern pens.

Edited April 2, 2009 by MDI

[MattN]

And let us also not forget about hard rubber, a material used in early fountain pens (mostly pre-celluloid) and a small number of modern ones. Hard rubber is very durable and feels nice, but it tends to discolour quite a lot over time and, being totally opaque and monochromatic, has none of the depth of colour that people value from celluloid.

[Inka]

I like the wood analogy too, comparing Oak to Balsa although more different to woods than apples and oranges are to fruits.

How about leather?

Seems similar when seeing something I want is leather, can't help but wonder what kind, how thick, how soft or pliable, the stitching, place it was treated, hide source, ...

It's like the old marketing ploy used by Chrysler years ago, calling their leather "Corinthian Leather" when it had no affiliation to Corinth and means absolutely nothing but that it is leather.

Corinthian leather was mass-produced in a plant in New Jersey and not of the best quality leather either.

I too say buy what you like, understand the difference in new vs vintage "plastics" if into collecting fountain pens since that seems to be the best time to even be of any concern.

Great question though, regardless, as I did learn a lot about vintage vs new materials used in fountain pens for whatever it's worth, since I'm not really a collector [yet].

[craynerd]

Sorry to go a little off topic but I remember the post grads further nitrating a pingpong ball at university and then igniting it - it just lit with a flash. They then wrapped another ball in tape and lit that, needless to say it exploded with the most enormous bang!

 

I don`t recommend doing it with your vintage FPs!

[donwinn]

Problem with so called "plastics" and a company listing what "type" of plastic something is made of is difficult.

 

Many so called "plastics" can be made differently batch to batch, mixing different polymers together in the extruders to make their own "special" blend. Because of this anything more then a generalization of the subgroup of plastic will only serve to confuse most, and not really say much about the plastic other then allow others to copy it.

 

2 Plastics being extruded in the same line at different times made of virtually identical components but slightly different quantities will result in 2 very different acting plastics.

 

Dimitri

 

On a parallel note, saying something is made of "plastic" is like saying something is mate of "metal". It (metal) is a very broad term, which is by its very nature very general, and can easily and accurately be applied to many very different substances, e.g, lead, iron, gold, silver, copper, bronze, platinum. Likewise, plastic can refer to a nearly equally wide variety of nearly as disparate materials, from polystyrene/sytrofoam, to pmma resin, from which tooth crowns, and some fountain pens are made.

 

Donnie

 

[Dimitri]

In a parallel note, saying something is made of "plastic" is like saying something is mate of "metal".

 

Very true however if I said a pen nib was made of F2 Steel so it would last a dozen lifetimes without cheating how many will know what I am talking about?

 

Dimitri

 

[david i]

Plastic is the largest, most generic group. Celluloid is a very specific reference to a concrete material.

 

Funny, I'd never before considered Celluloid to be concrete

 

-d

[MDI]

Funny, I'd never before considered Celluloid to be concrete

 

This is payback for that comment re: the snake pics isn't it

[LedZepGirl]

Sorry to go a little off topic but I remember the post grads further nitrating a pingpong ball at university and then igniting it - it just lit with a flash. They then wrapped another ball in tape and lit that, needless to say it exploded with the most enormous bang!

 

I don`t recommend doing it with your vintage FPs!

 

 

My uncle almost burned his dorm down by putting a ping pong ball in the shade of a floor lamp. The heat made it ignite and it kept burning until it went out on its own, water wouldn't put it out. After he told me about that I've always wanted to light one on fire. lol

[ToasterPastry]

Of course, saying "plastic is plastic," is easy until you've actually held a celluloid pen vs. a resin pen. In the most perfect example I can think of...I saw a bright red-orange flat-topped fountain pen behind glass in an antique store window in a small South Dakota town. Stuck to it was a $5 price tag. Excitingly thinking that someone had just gifted me a Parker Duofold, I had the store clerk hand me the pen. Instead of a Parker pen machined out of rod-stock celluloid, I was handed a Wearever copy created much more cheaply out of injection molded resin. It sounded differently and it felt differently. Similarly, Sheaffer flat tops are made from rod-stock machined celluloid. Sheaffer flat-top No-Nonsense pens are made from tubes of injection molded resin. Parker 51s were made from injection molded plastic. Parker Superchrome ink was formulated with isopropyl alcohol for fast drying. Isopropyl alcohol melts celluloid pens. Hence the ink was formulated to be used "only" in Parker 51s.

[Daosus]

I would also like to see a clear Demonstrator pen made with Polycarbonate, the same stuff used in bulletproof "*glass" [*not a glass at all but a thermoplastic polymer and not bulletproof but more bullet-resistant].

Polycarbonate is also used in impact-resistant eyeglass lenses, motorcycle faring/windshields, even some new headlights, because it resists breakage when hit by a rock or other hard objects traveling at high speeds.

Although extremely hard to break, Polycarbonate is easy to scratch unless treated with a hardener/scratch-resistant coating.

DVDs and CDs are usually made from Polycarbonate and if you'd ever tried to bend and break one you'll know how tough this stuff is.

 

 

There is actually a pen made of polycarbonate. The problem is, they chose to use an opaque black variety and called the pen the Lamy 2000. :embarrassed_smile:

[Kimo]

Real celluloid (cellulose nitrate) is quite expensive and time consuming to manufacture, is very difficult to make into pens and gives you the very best and richest colors and three-dimensional depth that no other material can come close to. It also feels warm and alive in your hand in a way that no other material does. If you find a modern pen made with cellulose nitrate celluloid you will wind up paying a high premium for it

 

Cellulose acetate is much less costly variety/substitute for real celluloid and it looks great but does not have quite the same color, 3-D depth, and feel qualities of real celluloid. It is relatively easy an not expensive to manufacture and you would not expect to pay much of premium for this.

 

Resin, precious resin, polycarbonate, and all of the other plastics are basically fancy names for plastic that is a step above the plastic used in a Bic pen, but it is not expensive material or difficult to make and I would not pay any premium for a pen made from it.

 

 

[saintsimon]

There is actually a pen made of polycarbonate. The problem is, they chose to use an opaque black variety and called the pen the Lamy 2000. :embarrassed_smile:

It is fiberglass reinforced polycarbonate, this is opaque anyway.

 

Celluloid cannot be cheaply injection molded, like many other plastics. Celluloid pens have to be formed into shape on a lathe from rod stock. The celluloid rods have to "cure" for months after manufacture to become stable and usable.

Edited April 3, 2009 by saintsimon

[MDI]

Does anyone actually have the numbers on thermal conductivity of celluloid pens vs some of the more common pen resins (would be great to compare to MB's resin...) so that we can back up all these "feels warm" comments?

[drawline]

When you have a ebonite or celluloid pen it will be clearly noted, while in all other typical cases it is what most people would perceive to be shiny hard plastic of some sort - hence why the similarly general, but more vague, term resin seems questionable and cynical.

[vtdolfan]

What is the difference betwee "plastic" and "resin" and Cellulod"

 

Easy - a couple hundred bucks.

[BladeArcher]

I remember a few years back that Omas's multi-faceted pens (can't remember the brand name) claimed they were made from long-time cured celluloid rod stock. Does anyone remember them, and if so, were they cellulose nitrate or acetate?

 

Regards,

Blade

 

P.S. I think it was the Omas 360.

Edited April 5, 2009 by BladeArcher