I was messing around last night, looking at break cues. I saw a couple offered with Bakelite tips, and it got me thinking. What is the difference between bakelite and phenolic? I know bakelite was the predecessor to phenolic resin, or something along those lines. Do they perform the same? Is there a big difference between them, or is this just a companies way of getting around the BCAPL ban on phenolic tips?
Bakelite is a type of phenolic compound. In the early 1900's Leo Baekeland developed the first artificial plastic. Baekeland's discovery was a phenolic resin which he named "Bakelite". Bakelite was not explosive or flammable, it was easy to work with, and more importantly, its playing characteristics were very similar to ivory.
Bakelite is the result of a polymerization process, between phenol and formaldehyde heated together. The reactions are complex, but the final result is a hard "plastic" made of cross-linked polymer chains. Modern phenolic resin is made from thermosetting resins, obtained thru the chemical reaction of phenols and simple aldehydes.
Bakelite was the first true synthetic plastic material (having no natural analogs). It was used for billiard balls, piano keys and knife handles from 1907, and rapidly replaced ivory. From 1920, it was used in a wide variety of products. Bakelite quickly became the material of choice as a replacement for ivory for billiard balls. It would go on to fame as "the material of a thousand uses".
Saluc (Belgium) experimented with various phenolic resin compounds after WWII and today they produce 80% of the worlds pool, billiards, and snooker balls under the names Aramith and Crystalate.
The most common Bakelite and 'phenolic' tips are canvas and canvas linen phenolic where the textile fibers are mixed throughout the phenolic blend.
Some folks claim that Bakelite holds chalk better than phenolic although I have not observed much difference between the two in that respect.