It will be clear that in the treatment of the rubber preparatory to smoking the whole process should be continuous, and delay should be avoided if the best results are to be obtained.
The Newer Method of Hanging in the Open Air.
Smoking of Rubber.—The assumption may have been noted above that the sheet is to be smoked. As far as our knowledge extends, none but small native estates now prepare sheet rubber of any other type, with the exception of certain patent processes. Air-dried sheets are generally made on small-holdings, and are bought in the market chiefly for the purpose of macerating and making into blanket crepe. We have no intention, therefore, of discussing the possibilities or qualities of air-dried sheets, as the output of sheet-rubber from our estates is always in smoked form. The drying (or, properly, smoking) stage will be discussed in [Chapter XI].
CHAPTER X
PREPARATION OF CREPE RUBBER
No. 1, or Fine Pale Crepe.—Considering first the preparation of the highest grade, fine pale crepe, it must be stated that the difficulties attached to the process are generally not sufficiently appreciated. In this pale rubber minor blemishes are so plainly apparent that their importance is highly exaggerated, and what would worthily escape notice in smoked rubber assumes disproportionate prominence in pale crepes. The very fact that such a delicate material as colourless coagulum has to be manipulated in coarse iron rollers, with the attendant oil and grease worries, should be sufficient to deter one from criticising too harshly the occasional lapses of an estate struggling to give of its best to the market. At the same time there can be no doubt that if precautions are taken to attend to all likely sources of contamination, defects in pale crepe may be avoided to a wonderful extent; and on some estates the observance of elementary rules enables the preparation of the finest pale crepe to be made almost mechanically.