This site presents two books about composite materials. The first, “The String and Glue of our World”, is a book about the science, engineering, history, and art of making things out of composites told in a manner that is hopefully approachable, engaging, and entertaining, even for the casual reader. It is not intended to replace or even be a textbook on the subject nor for the serious practitioner who has lots of experience with composites and needs a reference book. You don’t have to be a Ph.D. engineer or scientist to understand the book and appreciate the significance and beauty of composite materials. All you need really is a basic high school education in math and science (chemistry would help) and enough curiosity to want to know how these wonderful materials are made and most importantly why.

My second book, "Sustainable Composite Materials", which has a release date of April 6 2026, is intended to be a roadmap for the industry and other practitioners, as well as the interested general public, in how to reduce and potentially even eliminate the rather large carbon footprint that composite materials represents. The biggest problem is that once you stick the strings together with your glue, when you are done using it, the strings and glues don't come apart easily. This book demonstrates how to do that and what to do with what you get back. It also provides a fairly up to date status of where this industry stands today in efforts to become sustainable.

String and Glue is available from this website, McFarland Books and Amazon, as well as some physical bookstores, and many online booksellers. Sustainable Composite Materials is available from McFarland, Amazon, and other online booksellers, and of course from this site as well.

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How to Make Composites Processing and Fabrication Sustainable

#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fabrication, #processequipment This week’s newsletter is the third in my series laying out the roadmap to sustainability in composites. But before I get started, I need to let everyone know that my second book, “Sustainable Composite Materials, A Roadmap to a Circular Economy” is officially released as of April 6 (Monday). The book covers the watershed of the issue of sustainability for these wonderful mate

3 days ago8 min read

Reducing the Carbon Footprint of String and Glue (Fiber and Resin) Manufacture

#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfootprint, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins Last week I wrote about the raw materials for composites and how high their carbon footprint is, primarily because at present most if not all raw materials for advanced composites are based in petroleum – big oil. This week I want to follow the roadmap outlined in my new book to the next step. That step is the production process for the fibers and resins that make up modern composites, that i

Apr 110 min read

Sustainability in the Composites Raw Material Supply Chain

#composites, #sustainability, #rawmaterials, #greenmaterials, #naturalfibers, #naturalresins I’m going back to what I wrote about a couple of weeks ago – the recommendations for the composites industry that I have in my upcoming book. I promised that I would deal with each part of the industry in turn until I got all the way to the recyclers, talking about where we are today and what I see as a path to sustainability that each piece of the industry can take. From https://act

Mar 2510 min read

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How to Make Composites Processing and Fabrication Sustainable

#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fabrication, #processequipment This week’s newsletter is the third in my series laying out the roadmap to sustainability in composites. But before I get started, I need to let everyone know that my second book, “Sustainable Composite Materials, A Roadmap to a Circular Economy” is officially released as of April 6 (Monday). The book covers the watershed of the issue of sustainability for these wonderful mate

3 days ago8 min read

Reducing the Carbon Footprint of String and Glue (Fiber and Resin) Manufacture

#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfootprint, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins Last week I wrote about the raw materials for composites and how high their carbon footprint is, primarily because at present most if not all raw materials for advanced composites are based in petroleum – big oil. This week I want to follow the roadmap outlined in my new book to the next step. That step is the production process for the fibers and resins that make up modern composites, that i

Apr 110 min read

Sustainability in the Composites Raw Material Supply Chain

#composites, #sustainability, #rawmaterials, #greenmaterials, #naturalfibers, #naturalresins I’m going back to what I wrote about a couple of weeks ago – the recommendations for the composites industry that I have in my upcoming book. I promised that I would deal with each part of the industry in turn until I got all the way to the recyclers, talking about where we are today and what I see as a path to sustainability that each piece of the industry can take. From https://act

Mar 2510 min read

Natural Fibers and Circularity in the Auto Industry

#composites, #sustainability, #naturalfibers, #autoindustry, #circularity This week I thought I would highlight one of the things I touched on in my second book and also expand a bit on a theme I brought up a few months ago. The idea is that there is a growing trend in the auto industry to make their products more environmentally friendly as well as easier to recycle when the auto is used up. This theme is a recurring one in many industries, but since the auto industry uses

Mar 187 min read

DARPA is Looking to Convert Ag Waste into Useful Stuff

#composites, #sustainability, #agwaste, #forestproductswaste, #woodwaste, #DARPA I know I promised to talk about my upcoming book in this and the next few posts, but I saw such an interesting article on LinkedIn on March 2 (last Monday) from DARPA of all places that I had to write about it. I’ll weave the book back in a bit later in this post after I describe what I saw from DARPA. Fleetwood Project – DARPA Biological Technologies Office March 2, 2026 The article is about an

Mar 118 min read

Sustainable Composite Materials, A Roadmap to a Circular Economy

#composites, #sustainability, #circulareconomy, #roadmap, #bookwriting I got the proofs for my book last week, and over the weekend I put together the index and got it back to my publisher. That is the last task I have to do before it goes to print. I did look over the proofs, found a couple of typos (best to find those now) and suggested moving some figures around so that they line up with the text better, so now it is up to my publisher. The book is 200 pages long, so it

Mar 49 min read

A Word about Vitrimers – A Thermoset That Can Act Like a Thermoplastic

#composites, #sustainability, #vitrimer, #recyclableresin, #biocomposite, #bioresins I have been seeing articles in several different things that I read about a new class of polymers that is rather intriguing. These polymers are called “vitrimers”. Polymers that were processable by covalent bond exchange reactions (movable and reconfigurable covalent crosslinks) were developed initially in the 1990’s at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). James Economy’s gr

Feb 257 min read

ABOUT ME

Ned Patton, Ph.D., P.E. lives and works in San Diego California. He has more than 40 years of experience in research and technology development, and has been involved with and has been a proponent of composites for over 35 of those years. Currently working at Oceaneering International as a senior technical professional, he is actively developing composite material parts and structures for use undersea.