Adventures with Home-Made Plastic
I have been experimenting (read: playing) with milk curds to produce a rudimentary casein plastic . There's an instructable if you're interested in doing this yourself. First attempt: a lump of pure casein took about a week to dry for me. Before it fully dried, I was able to pierce it with a bradawl and screw a PC case screw into the resulting hole. Maybe I'll use this for making my own stand-outs. Second attempt: I thought I'd try to use it to reinforce some corrugated cardboard. When I make cardboard PC cases, making the case stiff enough is always a design issue. I followed the instructable, but re-dissolved the casein (using a little water and a teaspoon or two of bicarbonate of soda) and soaked it into the cardboard. I also heated it in a 50° C oven for an hour in an attempt to accelerate the drying. It was a failure: the cardboard warped and was not significantly strengthened. Happy accident: While cleaning up with some paper towel, I decided t