Unhandleable

The difficulty of controlling the size and distribution of such defects leads to a spread of strengths obtained from an otherwise identical set of test bars, and it is partly this lack of an equivalent to the relatively consistent yield stress or ultimate tensile strength of metals that has resulted in the dubbing of ceramics as unreliable and unhandlable.

I confide a little of this – my new, unhandle-able worry – and he recommends I read The Metamorphosis by Kafka (Bantam Classics, 1972).