So, where did the descriptive "hard rubber" come from? Anybody know when or who coined the phrase?

SRH

Well, the material was technically a rubber by compositin. And it wasnt soft. So... Hard Rubber.

Gutta-percha was a natural latex product originally derived from a tree in Malaysia, and was widely used in the second 1/2 of the 1800s. Hard rubber was made by vulcanization of India rubber from the latex of different trees. Both are pliable when heated; hard when cooled.
Bakelite was the first plastic and patented in 1909, and mostly replaced gutta-percha.

Thanks to both of you. Just the kind of information I was hoping for. I just couldn't find it doing searches.

Best, SRH

I do not like when a Fox or other older doubles are described as having a plastic buttplate. Bobby

Some history here. When I was on the PGCA Research Committee, copying the Parker records at Ilion in 1998, we came upon many orders that called of "rubber butts". We assumed that these orders referred to recoil pads. We were wrong, the term referred to the hard rubber buttplates that were standard on most Parkers. The members of the Research Committee grew a bit tired of seeing this term used and gravitated to the more interesting term "Rub her butt". We attribute this term to Research Committee member Allen Swanson.

when you sand or rub hard on an original "hard Rubber" butt plate it smells like rubber

Okay. Are the reproductions "hard rubber", or are they plastic?

SRH

Stan,
Ureathane. Better in every respect.

Best,
Ted

Thanks, Ted. There are so many different kinds of plastic, it is plumb comfewsing. Plus, I just have a hard time growing fond of any of it.

SRH

And there are literally millions of rubber, both natural and synthetic, compounds. A tire can easily have 10 to 20 different compounds in it to best serve each component's job. While synthetic rubbers have replaced latex compounds in most tire use, there are still some jobs best done by latex compounds.

DDA

Yeah...like the treadstock on a raidial tire. Once radials became the norm, natural rubber got a lot more use in tires. One more thing, you can make latex out of any rubber material. A case in point is the use of Nitrile rubber in gloves because some folks have a problem with natural rubber latex gloves. They are both made by the same dipping process and in this case, nitrile is extended in a solvent to become a latex.

tight lines Jim Sears