I'm curious about various Bakelite handguards & pistol grips.

How and what is it made of?

Has anyone ever attempted to duplicate a similar look to match an original piece? (say a lower handguard to go with an upper gas tube cover, or vicea-versa)

TIA

Cheers,
HarvKY

It's a phenolic that has been around for a hundred years or so. You can read up on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite

To see examples of bakelite handgun grips/panels, just take a look at any number of Webley or Enfield revolvers of WW2/Korean era. They featured grips of this material. Seems to still be working even though bakelite would seem a rather more brittle plastic than we would want these days.

And here I thought it was another name for my wife's cooking................................

Careful Will, you may be starving soon

Yeah, I'm familiar with bakelite from automotive iginition parts but the more distinctive fiberous patterns in some of the AK handguards are interesting to me.
I was wondering if anyone had tried matching the look in anyway

Thanx,
HarvKY