Handleability Panel Comments on Thermobestos and Competing Calcium Silicate Insulations (c. 1960)

Five typed pages headed "Comments from Insulation Handleability Data Sheets Made Out by the Handleability Panel," marked as attachments 5 to 9 to technical report T.R. 20853-1, probably a Johns-Manville research report. A panel handled numbered samples of pipe covering and block and wrote short comments on each: J-M's Thermobestos, Philip Carey's Careytemp, Keasbey & Mattison's Kaytherm, Ruberoid's Calsilite, Baldwin-Ehret-Hill's Thermasil, Owens-Corning Fiberglas's Kaylo and Union Asbestos and Rubber Company's Unibestos. Dustiness is noted for nearly every sample, from "No dust" and "Very little dust" for most Thermobestos and Kaylo samples to "Very dusty" and "Very dirty" for Careytemp and Kaytherm.

What it shows

The comments show that dust was one of the qualities insulation makers tested when they compared products by hand, cutting, sawing and breaking them as an insulator would. One panelist wrote of a Kaytherm pipe covering with "Very long fibers" that it "Sheds" and "Feel bothers me." The pages do not say how the samples were chosen or what the full report concluded. The old research base records that the pages came from exhibits to J-M's standard interrogatory answers.