General Chat

Hello Ann in EssexYes there are springs at Malvern too, not had the courage to try them but no doubt they taste the same as the others. By experience medicine etc that is 'good for you', never tastes nice!!

I have Ancestry but I don't have gold membership of GR so can't really compare. However if you have London ancestors Ancestry does have the parish records for London. I think they do have more than GR. I have found it very useful, pity they don't have the 1911 census but can't have everything.

Thanks ladies for the welcome.
As I'm usually tucked up in bed by 10pm that explains why I haven't seen any of the nasty stuff!
Have any of you got membership for the Ancestry website? I've been considering signing up for it, but don't know if it is worth the bother - does it have anything more on it that GR? I have 2 weeks trial that I can still sign up for but if I activate that I want to be prepared with what I want to search for........ if the info I need is available on that site etc. Any idea how good it is please?

Julie W

Hi Julie and welcome, no need to feel shy!!

Just ask if you want to know anything.
To nudge a thread is to add something to it (sometimes the word nudge or 'n') because you feel it is worthy of another read by people or somebody asks about something that appeared on the thread. Obviously if you add a post to any thread, no matter how old it goes to the top of the board it is on.
The A-Z threads are just like quizzes. If you go to the firat post it usually tells you what is required. Some people like them, some don't it is all a matter of taste and opinion. e.g. A-Z of boys names you follow the previous poster with a name beginning with the next letter of the alphabet.

The trouble on the boards is mainly on chat, mainly centres around a few people and often late at night.

Hello Julie
I have been a member since 2003 and i am still a bit wary about posting on threads , i'm not a very confident person to be honest .

They are a nice bunch on here though and this is the thread i feel most comfortable on .

Welcome .

Anne , Yes they do and big dollups of poo on the washing
The price you pay for living near farmers fields and the coast..

Hello All
I'm a newbie too! I've been doing my family tree for 18 months now and been a member of GR for probably as long. I recently started reading the threads on Community but felt very much like an outsider. I don't understand 'nudging' or 'A-Z's' (would welcome an explanation of common terminology!) I have been blissfully unaware of the trouble mentioned in various bit of the threads - perhaps I haven't read the right snippets.....franky I'm baffled that people would use this site to vent and glad that I haven't come across it. I've noticed a lot of requests for help and am pleasantly surprised how quickly people respond to them. I am lucky that I have managed on my own up to now, but it is reassuring to know there are so many helpful members out there should the need arise. Happy New Year to all who read this.
Julie W

I bet they make a racket Cath. Everyone is welcome to add to this thread, the more the merrier.

Hello all ,
Only added once but have still been reading what you have all been up to .

It is a lovely thread for a change , no snide remarks etc.
Always a bit dubious about joining in an ongoing thread as i always feel like i am intruding in some way .
Well i have not bothered getting dressed since Fri but will have to sort myself out as little un is back at school tomorrow , thank god .

No point is me putting out anything for the birds where i live , the little ones don,t stand a chance. 90% of the birds that come around here are crows or seagulls .

Thanks Ann, will give them a try. X

I have taken this from the bird thread, a recipe from Glemys (the menace)

Hi, Jill and Julia - and anyone else who might be interested. Here it is, a la Glenys:-

Bird Fat Cakes – home-made.

We have a saucer on our kitchen windowsill for breadcrumbs, before the plates go into the dishwasher.

Also, we save any fat from, say, spag bol when draining the mincemeat, and stock it up in the fridge until we have enough to make the "cakes". However, Tesco Value lard is good – and cheap!

We buy birdseed at the cheapest store - currently "Pets At Home"; this includes canary seed and calcium-enriched bird grit, songbird food and sunflower seeds.

Stale biscuits, and oats, can be mixed in, too. Remember that old cereal packet you forgot to use up? Now’s your chance!

You need at least 3 medium, heatproof containers; have 5 ready, in case. I usually use the containers that held shop-bought fat cakes, but you can also use Pot Noodle tubs and the like. Place them on wipeable placemats on your kitchen worktop.

When you have 2 or 3 dishes-full of fat in the fridge, usually collected over a few weeks, melt it in a saucepan. While the fat is melting, put the same, plus half as much again, amount of breadcrumbs, seeds etc. into a mixing bowl.

When the fat has melted, mix the food in with it, stir thoroughly and simmer for a couple of minutes. Then pour carefully into the tubs and leave to cool down. After about an hour, put them in the fridge, to solidify.

I hope I haven't made it sound complicated; it really is very easy. It takes literally a few minutes to do, and the pleasure it gives me to see those poor birds out in the cold, eating it, is great.

I loved reading about the birds. We have a lot of different ones out here but as for names !!! cant help.
I would be interested to know how to make the fat balls for them though. We dont see many squirrels so not a problem and my puppy doesn't bother them, she sits on the path and watches them.

great friendly thread Ann. X

Thank you Ann and BC, I did wonder if they were parakeets as we have an abundance of them around here - but usually heard rather than seen. At the far end of my road (it has a different name down that end) there is a row of tall trees which is full of very, very noisy parakeets but they are not usually down at this end.

I've just seen a young fox wandering across the road, he stared at me watching him through the window but then trotted off and disappeared into the garden of a bungalow across the road.

I think I have finally got the better of the squirrels by hanging my bird feeders on the ends of my whirly washing line. They knocked them off of the tree branches and stole all the contents. Cheeky things even stole the home made fat balls (I'd put them in my little "greenhouse" as I needed the room in my fridge) and to add insult to injury they smeared them all over my kitchen window. They do seem to have left the feeders alone now - perhaps they haven't realised where they are.

Kathleen

They do sound like parakeets, Kathleen. I know they are currently being considered as pests but there is no more beautiful sight than to see a flock of them fly over your head! I see more and more of them in Hyde Park. BC XX

Thanks for that Liz.

Persy, thank you, yes this thread has proved to be a success hasn't it, good to see people feeling comfortable with posting and chatting to each other.

Kathleen, could they be parraqueets? Do they look similar to small parrots? I know theya re around in some parts of the country around the London area I think. Doesn't matter what thread it is on Kathleen.

It sounds as if you had a great New Year, can't beat being with family can you? we enjoyed ours too although it was very quiet with just 4 of us.

Good morning, the sun is shining and the sky is clear - as it was yesterday so a great start to the New Year.

We had a great New Years Eve with my youngest daughter and her family, the journey up there was pretty good, even the M25 was quite smooth running. It was very cold but fortunately no snow, we arrived about 6pm (that is my eldest son, my sister and myself. About an hour later my middle son and his wife and my eldest daughter arrived. My other sons were not able to get there so it was not quite as noisy an evening as it had been in previous years. Loads of food, good company and someone, somewhere even put on a firework display which we watched for a while but it was too cold outside to stay for too long.
At around 3.30 my daughter in law drove their car home and my sister and I with eldest son stayed until Friday afternoon. We got home at about 5pm. It was a wonderful start to the New Year - but I am having trouble trying to remember what day it is !!!
Does anyone remember the lady from long ago who lived at Hundred Mile House? I cannot remember her name but I have often wondered if she is still a member - with all the name changes I have lost track of people. I still have my list, three pages of names of regular posters on Chat - but I stopped adding after a while as more and more people joined.
Ann, this is not the right thread for this question but please could you tell me - I have three birds in my garden bright green with orange beaks, about the size of a small pigeon - what are they? There is also a marauding dark, large tabby cat who keeps spooking them but I think I have chased him off now. They are attacking the peanuts and the fat balls. I am not very good at identifying birds apart from pigeons, magpies and robins.
Off now to make a cup of tea, hope you all have a lovely day.

Kathleen

LOL Liz

We don't need to use google - we can use you.
You could be our new search engine.

You are a love both day & night.

Persey xx

Patents and trademarks
U.S. Patent 1,658,597 Condensation product and method of making same
Bakelite AG (a German company) claims to own the trademark in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Cuba, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Republic of Macedonia, Malaysia, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Switzerland, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom.
Applications and usage

Bakelite radio at Bakelite museum.Although no longer extensively used as an industrial manufacturing material, Bakelite was used in myriad applications including saxophone mouthpieces, whistles, cameras, solid-body electric guitars, rotary-dial telephones, early machine guns, and appliance casings. The thermosetting plastic was at one point considered for the manufacture of coins, due to a shortage of traditional manufacturing material. In 1943, Bakelite and other non-metal materials were tested for usage as a penny in the United States before the Mint settled on zinc coated steel

The foremost usage of Bakelite today is as a substitute for porcelain and other opaque ceramics in applications where fine detail is unimportant (other thermoset resins can capture detail more finely when molded) and durability over traditional ceramic compounds is desired. As such, a main continuing use for bakelite is in the area of board and tabletop games. Devices such as billiard balls, dominoes, Mahjongg tiles and other gaming tilesets, and movers/pieces for games like chess, checkers, and backgammon are constructed of Bakelite for the look, durability, fine polish, weight, and sound of the resulting pieces. Dice are sometimes made of Bakelite for weight and sound, but the majority are made of a thermoplastic such as ABS. It is also used to make the presentation boxes of luxury Breitling watches. Bakelite is also sometimes used as a substitute for metal in the construction of firearm magazines.

Bakelite is also used in the mounting of metal samples in metallography

Phenolic resins have been commonly used in ablative heat shields. Soviet heatshields for ICBM warheads and spacecraft reentry consisted of asbestos textolite impregnated with bakelite

Bakelite (pronounced /ˈbеɪkɨlaɪt/), or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, is an early plastic. It is a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from an elimination reaction of phenol with formaldehyde, usually with a wood flour filler. It was developed in 1907–1909 by Belgian chemist Dr. Leo Baekeland.

One of the first plastics made from synthetic components (although phenol can be extracted from biological sources), Bakelite was used for its electrically nonconductive and heat-resistant properties in radio and telephone casings and electrical insulators, and also in such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, and children's toys. In 1993 Bakelite was designated an ACS National Historical Chemical Landmark in recognition of its significance as the world's first synthetic plastic.[1]

The "retro" appeal of old Bakelite products and labor intensive manufacturing has made them quite collectible in recent years.

History
Dr. Baekeland had originally set out to find a replacement for shellac (made from the excretion of lac beetles). Chemists had begun to recognize that many natural resins and fibers were polymers, and Baekeland investigated the reactions of phenol and formaldehyde. He first produced a soluble phenol-formaldehyde shellac called "Novolak" that never became a market success, then turned to developing a binder for asbestos which, at that time, was molded with rubber. By controlling the pressure and temperature applied to phenol and formaldehyde, he found he could produce his dreamed-of hard moldable plastic: bakelite.[2]

The Bakelite Corporation was formed in 1922 (after patent litigation favorable to Baekeland) from a merger of three companies: the General Bakelite Company, which Baekeland had founded in 1910, the Condensite Company founded by J.W. Aylesworth, and the Redmanol Chemical Products Company founded by L.V. Redman.[3]


Structure of BakeliteThe American Catalin Corporation acquired the Bakelite formulas in 1927 and currently manufactures Bakelite cast resins.

Bakelite Limited was formed in 1926 from the amalgamation of three suppliers of phenol formaldehyde materials: the Damard Lacquer Company Limited of Birmingham; Mouldensite Limited of Darley Dale and Redmanol Chemical Products Company of London. Around 1928 a new factory opened in Tyseley, Birmingham, England (subsequently demolished in 1998). In 1939 the company was acquired by the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation.

Properties
Phenolics are seldom used in general consumer products today due to the cost and complexity of production and their brittle nature. An exception to this overall decline is their use in small precision-shaped components where their specific properties are required, such as moulded disc brake cylinders, saucepan handles, electrical plugs and switches and parts for electrical irons. Today, Bakelite is manufactured and produced in sheet, rod and tube form for hundreds of industrial applications in the electronics, power generation and aerospace industries, and under a variety of commercial brand names, including Garolite.


Bakelite distributor rotor.Phenolic sheet is a hard, dense material made by applying heat and pressure to layers of paper or glass cloth impregnated with synthetic resin. These layers of laminations are usually of cellulose paper, cotton fabrics, synthetic yarn fabrics, glass fabrics or unwoven fabrics. When heat and pressure are applied to the layers, a chemical reaction (polymerization) transforms the layers into a high-pressure thermosetting industrial laminated plastic. When rubbed, original Bakelite has a telltale odor.

Bakelite Phenolic is produced in dozens of commercial grades and with various additives to meet diverse mechanical, electrical and thermal requirements. Some common types include:

PAPER REINFORCED PHENOLIC NEMA XX per MIL-I-24768 PBG Normal electrical applications, moderate mechanical strength, continuous operating temperature of 250°F.
CANVAS REINFORCED PHENOLIC NEMA C per MIL-I-24768 TYPE FBM NEMA CE per MIL-I-24768 TYPE FBG Good mechanical and impact strength with continuous operating temperature of 250°F.
LINEN REINFORCED PHENOLIC NEMA L per MIL-I-24768 TYPE FBI NEMA LE per MIL-I-24768 TYPE FEI Good mechanical and electrical strength. Recommended for intricate high strength parts. Continuous operating temperature 250°F.
NYLON REINFORCED PHENOLIC NEMA N-1 per MIL-I-24768 TYPE NPG Superior electrical properties under humid conditions, fungus resistant, continuous operating temperature of 160°F.
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