TACHARDIA 



LACCA 

 Lac 



THE LAC INSECT 



Dry Heat. 

 Molten Resin 



Cold-water. 



Shell-lac. 



his left hand he holds the end of the bag and resists the twisting action 

 produced by his assistant. The fused lac, in the portion most exposed to 

 the dry heat, is thus squeezed through the bag. Every now and then the 

 foreman gives his end of the bag a reverse twist, and this causes the portion 

 from which the lac has been removed to coil up like a rope. Steadily the 

 bag is drawn forward as portion after portion is exhausted. With his 

 right hand the foreman wields at intervals three weapons one a long iron 

 hooked poker with which he stirs the fire : a wooden spoon with which he 

 every now and again sprinkles with water the tiled floor in front of the 

 fire : and an iron scraper with which he removes the molten lac as it oozes 

 on to the surface of the bag and allows it to drop on the damp floor. If 

 not sufficiently cooked, the fused lac is picked up from the floor and placed 

 once more on the top of the bag and fused again, and even two or three 

 times. There seems to be great skill in knowing when the lac has been 



Proper Cooking, cooked to the proper extent. It is freely admitted that the hand-made lac 

 possesses certain properties never attained by the steam-machinery factories. 

 Shell-lac. The next stage is the production of shell-lac. For this 

 purpose a mass of molten lac is handed to an assistant and placed by him 

 on an earthen or zinc tube filled with hot water (or on a green banana 

 stem) fixed in the ground at an angle of about 45 to the floor. By means 

 of a ribbon of palm-leaf stretched between the hands, the assistant spreads 

 the lump of molten lac into a thin skin perhaps one-eighth of an inch in 

 thickness. But in this operation, which looks so simple, great skill is 

 required in exercising just the right pressure to cause the lac to spread out 

 in a compact sheet of uniform thickness. The sheet or skin is now clipped 

 off the tube, trimmed into a rectangular form, and handed to still another 

 assistant, who, carrying it in front of the fire, seizes it between his toes, 

 teeth and hands, and widening his legs as he expands his arms and 



Hand-stretching, straightens his body and neck, stretches the sheet into three or four times 

 its original size and reduces it to the thinness of tissue paper. It is then 

 laid on a mat and allowed to cool gradually. 



Selection. When quite cold the sheets are given to persons who assort them ac- 



cording to colour and break out all impurities and darker coloured portions. 

 The rejections either constitute lower grades or are mixed with dark- 

 coloured seed-lac and used up in the manufacture of shell-lac where colour 

 is no objection. In the production of garnet-lac, the sheets are taken at 



Garnet-lac, the hot-tube stage, no further stretching being necessary. Garnet-lac is very 

 largely, however, the special product of the steam-power factories. As 

 its name implies, it is of a deep rich red colour, and is in demand for indus- 

 tries where colour is not a disadvantage. In the preparation of button-lac, 

 the molten material is not stretched at all but is simply allowed to drop on 

 to a smooth substance, such as a green leaf-sheath taken from the banana 

 stem. Garnet and button lacs contain as a rule no arsenic, though they 

 may possess a high percentage of resin. 



Refuse. The refuse that remains in the melting-bags is removed and the bags 



cleaned by being boiled in alkali. The refuse is then made into large 



Cakes. circular cakes 6 inches in diameter and 1 inch or more thick. These are 



very possibly the " great cakes " alluded to by the East India Company as 

 procured in 1816 from Agra, as also the lump-lac of the early commercial 

 returns. They are sold, like the khud and gaud, to the manufacturers of 

 sealing-wax, bangles, toys, etc., and by the cabinet-makers such crude lacs 

 are largely employed to cover up cracks in wood. 



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