My understanding from the Wikipedia article is that asbestos is a crystalline mineral in the form of ultrathin fibers or filaments. The article describes it as “soft and pliant” and describes ancient cultures weaving fabric out of it with amazing fireproof properties.
So this stuff is rock. Rock that you can weave. I’m having trouble mentally digesting this. Does it feel like cotton candy? Is it brittle? If you have a ball of it and squeeze it, does it bounce back? Can you crush it into powder in your hand?
(NOTE: I’m not asking about health or legal aspects. Those answers are easy to find.)
I’ve handled it in the form of small bricks that were used as laser test targets. It was light, white and rigid. It felt like a ceramic material. It wasn’t brittle, although I suppose you could crush it, given enough force.
It can be molded into tiles (we had a kitchen floor made of one when I was young). Woven into a cloth for fire resistant clothing for firemen. Suspended in a foam for insulation. Pressed into brake pads. Pretty much like any other ceramic fiber. The cloth and foam types are not rated for as high of a temperature due to the stuff they mix it with to make it flexible. I really could not tell much of a difference between it and some of the replacement fiber materials (kaowool comes to mind- larger fibers - not cable of getting into your lungs like asbestos) they use in it’s place. It’s not really compressable. Some types can be crushed hand. Tiles are fairly tough. There are many industrial type materials that look and feel like it, so you cannot just point to it and say that it is definitely asbestos, although if you know when it was applied and what was commonly sold at the time you might be able to have a good idea.
Asbestos used to be quite common. To ask “what does it feel like?” is too general of a question. What does fiberglass feel like? The body of a Corvette feels nothing like pink insulation. It’s a matter or how it is processed. Asbestos is like a fine fiber which can be processed in any number of ways. Usually it was compressed into sheets which were used as a fire retardant or as insulation. Because it is fibrous it can also be sprayed for the same purpose. The fibers are so durable it is toxic when inhaled. It will not break down in the lungs.
A panel of asbestos would typically feel like a panel of very hard, compressed felt that could be bent and broken (thereby releasing fibers into the air). Depending on how it was processed it could be quite flexible or very rigid. Asbestos that is undisturbed is pretty much benign because the fibers remain bonded. It’s when it is disturbed and the fibers get released into breathable air that it is dangerous.
Cue the guy who works with composite materials (mostly fiberglass) every day.
Fiberglass feels like coarse thread. If it’s spun very finely, it feels like cotton candy. This is what most insulation is made like. If it’s spun coarser, it feels like, well, coarse and stiff thread.
When fiberglass is spun fine, it tends to fragment easily and embed itself into skin. This is why anyone who has handled insulation with bare skin gets some decently nasty skin irritation.
When it’s spun coarser the irritation isn’t as bad. But the coating on most fiberglass (the one that enables it to form a good bond with a matrix material, unsaturated polyester polymer in my case) is also a skin irritant.
So I think fiberglass can be characterized as feeling "Like coarse thread (or cloth, if it’s woven as such) that irritates your skin.
When you talk about a Corvette - well, that fiberglass is incorporated into a fiber-reinforced polymer. So you’re not feeling the glass (or possibly carbon fiber), you’re feeling the matrix - maybe a unsat polyester, vinylester, epoxy, urethane, heck even maybe a thermoplastic.
I assume you’re asking specifically about asbestos fiber on its own (the stuff has often been used in powdered form or in fibers mixed into cement or epoxy).
The most common sort used these days is chrysotile asbestos. It’s the least brittle type, I think. The fibers have sort of waxy or soapy texture, and a silky lustre. The raw fibers tend to break apart into smaller fibers–imagine taking a few strands of hair that have been stuck together with conditioner and allowed to dry and rubbing them between your fingers. Chrysotile asbestos can be processed so that it’s flexible enough to make rope out of–I would think that if you wadded up some of the rope and scrunched it, it would bounce back. (I’ve never tried it, though.)
I don’t know that you could actually powder the fiber with your bare hands, but you could certainly crunch some types up into tiny fragments. Doing so would be a very, very bad idea. Even if you don’t inhale any of it, the fragments of some types of the stuff are needlelike, and will stick in your skin, and can cause odd warts and callouses to form. (Now picture it doing the same thing in your lungs. And that’s not even considering the cancer angle.)
Probably the easiest familiar material to liken it to is fiberglass.