Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 227, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1919 — Three Principal Ways of Imitating Silk Worm’s Method of Making Silk [ARTICLE]

Three Principal Ways of Imitating Silk Worm’s Method of Making Silk

Of the three principal ways of making artificial silk the so-called viscose process is perhaps most in use. Commencing with some form of cellulose, cotton or wood pulp, the material is treated with caustic soda till a soda cellulose compound is formed that is soluble in carbon bisulphide to form a viscid, thick liquid. In all processes for silk manufacture the fibrous condition of the original material is destroyed, the whole intent of the operation being to imitate the work of the silk worm. The silk worm transforms in its anatomy the leaf substance on which it feeds to a v into silk fiber. Sometimes this operation of the silk worm Is interrupted, as when the worm is itself treated with vinegar and the viscid fluid drawn by hand into the glistening snells used by fishermen to attach the hooks and flies to Ijis braided silk trout line. After the cellulose solution is formed the problem of again producing a fiber has been met in various ways, but all depend on forcing the liquid through small apertures, sometimes minute glass tubes —sometimes holes bored in a metal plate—into a vat filled with liquid, from which it may be recovered for reeling and spinning in the ordinary way.