This is set edgeways in a slot in the shaft. On each side of the trestle near the ground is a treadle; from one of these a cotton cord passes over the shaft taking a round turn and is made fast to the other treadle. The operator sits astride the trestle with a foot on each treadle. By working them alternately he produces a rapid revolution of the shaft in alternate directions, and the cutting disc being double-edged it cuts both ways. By holding a half nut against the revolving cutter he in a few seconds rasps out every particle of the nut which falls upon a tray in fine shreds.
The shredded material is then heated in a cast-iron pan over a slow fire, and whilst hot is filled into bags of strong material which are placed in the press.
This is constructed entirely of hard wood, and the pressure is obtained by driving wedges with a heavy mallet.
The system is primitive, but all the apparatus is practical and very cheap.
D. Carlos Almeida of Biñan stated to me in 1890 that 400 large cocoa-nuts gave by this process one tinaja or jar of oil, equivalent to 10½ English gallons, which was then worth on the spot six Mexican dollars. It is sold in Manila. At this time cocoa-nuts were sold in Santa Cruz, the capital of the Laguna, for about $15 per thousand. The oil cake was used either to feed pigs or as a manure about the roots of coffee-plants. The owner of cocoa-palm groves in Luzon or Visayas lives in anxiety during several months of each year, for should the vortex of a typhoon pass over or near his plantation, a large proportion of his trees may be destroyed.
The true locality for such plantations is in the southern and western parts of Mindanao and Palawan, to the south of a line drawn from the northern point of Mindanao to Busuánga Island in the Calamianes, preferring the most sheltered spots.
In this region the danger from typhoons is inconsiderable, and the trees flourish exceedingly. I have been shown trees in bearing at Puerta Princesa which I was assured were only three years old. I saw older trees bearing immense bunches of nuts, too many to count, and it seemed wonderful to see a slender trunk bearing aloft sixty feet in the air so heavy a load. From fifty to one hundred trees can be planted on an acre according to the space allowed to each, and when in full bearing after six or seven years each tree might give eighty nuts in a year. The crop goes on all the year round.
Copra is prepared from the nuts either by drying the whole nut under cover in the shade, allowing the water to become absorbed and then breaking up the kernel for bagging, or else by breaking it up first of all and drying it in the sun.
In the first case a large airy shed is required, and the process takes three months. In the latter case three days of sunshine will suffice, but the kernels must be protected from the dew at night and from any chance shower of rain. Artificial heat does not produce good copra, and besides is expensive to apply.
Making copra is one of the most paying enterprises in the Philippines, but it requires capital to be laid out several years beforehand, unless a plantation can be bought to start with.