230 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



I February, 1, 1912. 



The India-Rubber Trade in Great Britain. 



By Our Regular Corres[>ondent. 



TRADING 

 RESULTS. 



UNSATISFACTORY and in many cases disastrous reports 

 issued by plantation and other rubber companies floated in 

 the boom-time of 1910, have become so common of late as 

 hardly to attract notice, except among those financially concerned. 

 That this state of affairs should be reflected in the case of many 

 old-e.stablished rubber manufacturing 

 concerns where reports were issued in 

 December has caused surprise to many 

 people who do not appear in the respective companies' lists of 

 shareholders. This set-back in profits has affected not only small 

 works but concerns like those of the Dunlop Rubber Company, 

 Limited, and India-Rubber, Gutta-Percha and Telegraph Works, 

 Limited, of Silvertown, the shares in which are widely held. The 

 main cause in the decline of profit is probably much the sairie all 

 round, i. e., the purchase of raw rubber in advance at high prices, 

 and the subsequent inability to get a corresponding increase of 

 price for the finished goods. Many manufacturers have been 

 hit by contracts under which the delivery of same extended over 

 twelve months. Labor troubles have also in many cases proved 

 a source of loss, strikes having occurred not only in the rubber 

 works, but among railway and carting employes, causing disloca- 

 tion of trade. 



At the various company meetings where losses have had to be 

 explained, the respective chairmen have sought to console their 

 audiences by laying stress on the losses incurred by the other 

 companies, and by hinting that all may not be too well with those 

 private companies whose accounts are not made public property. 

 The announcement by the Dunlop Rubber Company's chairman 

 of an impending new issue of shares to finance an entirely new- 

 department was not too well received, the market value of the 

 shares having experienced a further small decline. 



The somewhat belated Board of Trade enquiry into the ex- 

 plosion of a devulcanizer at the Xorth-Western Rubber Com- 

 pany's works at Liverpool on October 

 4, 1910, was held early in December last 

 at the Chancery Court, Liverpool. One 

 man was killed by the explosion. In the course of the enquiry 

 the commissioners visited the works and had the process ex- 

 plained to them. A good deal of evidence was given in court 

 but it would take up two much space to comment on that at 

 length. The commissioners found that the explosion was due 

 to hydrostatic pressure on account of the devulcanizer having 

 been filled too full with the caustic soda solution. Moreover they 

 found that Dr. Torrey and his subordinates had no idea that 

 dangerous hydrostatic force could be expected in a boiler of that 

 kind. They were therefore not to blame for the accident and 

 none of them would be called upon to pay any part of the costs 

 of the inquiry. At the same time it was said that the devul- 

 canizers at the works should be kept under better supervision by 

 the engineer in charge and not left so much to subordinates. 

 The first six devulcanizers were made in America and the last 

 two in England from the American drawings, it being one of 

 the latter that exploded. Questioned on the subject of a safety 

 valve Dr. Torrey expressed himself as against its use, it being a 

 source of danger rather than of safety, though the commissioners 

 said that in their opinion some safety appliance was imperative 

 and such safety appliance must be automatic. 



It is satisfactory that the cause of the explosion seems to have 

 been definitely ascertained, because it will bring home to rubber 

 manufacturers a source of peril of which they had hitherto been 

 ignorant. I am not enough of an engineer to say whether there 

 is real justification for any such ignorance on the part of engi- 



EXPLOSION OF A 

 DEVULCANIZEa. 



ENLARGEMENT 

 OF WORKS. 



neers of experience. The devulcanizer was regularly inspected 

 by the Vulcan Boiler Insurance Company, Limited, but it did not 

 come out in evidence that they issued any warning as to the 

 danger of overfilling. Perhaps, however, any such advice might 

 have been resented as going beyond the limits of inspection. It 

 now remains for those rubber works which utilize the process 

 of vulcanizing in hot water to give careful instructions that the 

 pan must not be filled beyond a certain point. The insurance 

 company I may say was not a party to the inquiry, but offered 

 to give evidence through its engineers. With regard to the 

 safety-valve question 1 may refer to the matter again when the 

 Board of Trade report is issued, these reports not always corre- 

 sponding exactly with the judgment given in court. I under- 

 stand that a sort of arrangement was reached in court that Dr. 

 Torrey and a Board of Trade engineer should put their heads 

 together to see what is feasible in the way of a safety-valve. 



Messrs. Siemens Bros. & Co., Limited, have built new works 

 adji ining their cable factory at Woolwich, this being necessitated 

 by reason of the development of their 

 rubber insulated wire business in recent 

 years. The capacity of the new works 

 is 8.000 miles of insulated wire and cable per annum, in addition 

 to tapes and ebonite. The total floor space covers three acres, 

 the window^s occupying 40 per cent, of the space of the side walls. 

 The six new washing machines are driven by a 95 h. p. motor, 

 this being one of the first firms to adopt electrical driving for 

 rubber machinery — which occurred a good many years ago. 



Samples are being shown of solid tires said to be made entirely 



of reclaimed rubber and it is predicted that a great development 



in the use of rubber tires on steam 



RECLAIMED motor wagons is imminent. Under 



IN TIRES. . , = 



a national regulation which applies to 

 the wliole country the speed of steam motor wagons in towns is 

 limited to S miles an hour with steel tires, and 12 miles an hour 

 with resilient tires. I understand that a tire made of reclaimed 

 rubber has recently stood the ordinary commercial guarantee of 

 a 10,000-mile run with quite satisfactory results. The saving 

 in first cost is put at 75 per cent, of the cost of new rubber 

 tires, thus bringing the price low enough to cause rubber tires 

 to be largely used in the extensive steam transport business now 

 observable in our manufacturing centers. 



I SEE that a patent for desulphurizing and devulcanizing rubber 

 has been granted to W. W. Wildman and James Christy, Akron, 

 Ohio, the processes involved being the 

 time-honored ones of acid and alkali 

 treatment, the novelty presumably being 

 in the use of ench treatment cne after the other on the same lot 

 of vulcanized rubber. I notice that the majority of patentees use 

 the expression "devulcanization" freely, though I have never yet 

 come across any of these reclaimed rubbers which really were 

 devulcanized. True, they have been desulphurized as far as the 

 removal of their free sulphur is concerned, but this is not devul- 

 canization. Certainly the present patentees do not go as far as 

 some have done and claim that the rubber which has undergone 

 their process is equal to new rubber, and can be used for the 

 same purposes. They do, however, state categorically that it is 

 devulcanized, a term which evidently has more than one significa- 

 tion. It is very generally the case that reclaimed ruljliers contain 

 more combined rubber than they did prior to the reclaiming 

 process, though their free sulphur content may be practically nil. 

 The present patentees treat the finely divided rubber with a hot 

 6 per cent, solution of hydrochloric acid for one liour, wash GUI' 



DEVULCANIZING 

 PATENT. 



