Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1895 — Silk Dresses from Spruce Wood. [ARTICLE]

Silk Dresses from Spruce Wood.

When a silk dress can be made of spruce wood, some alcohol and a small quantity of ether, every workman’s wife ought to be able to afford one. The idea of manufacturing silk from ordinary wood pulp is original with Count de Chardonet, a citizen of France. The pulp is dried in an oven and plunged into a, mixture of sulphuric and nitric acids. Then it is washed with water and dried by alcohol. The product is dissolved iu a mixture of ether and alcohol, and the result Is collodion, the stuff that is sometimes used to make an artificial skin. This collodion, which is of a sticky and viscous consistency, flows through a tube that is perforated with hundreds of very minute boles. Through these holes it issues in threads so fine that six of them are required to form threads of the thickness necessary for weaving. The threads pass (hr ugh water which absorbs from them the ether and alcohol. They are thou ready for the loom, being strong, elastic and brillinnt qs the silk spun by silkworms. Before wound, however, they undergo a special treatment to render them non-combuo-tible.