Q» Feel, not springy — According to the apparent judgment of the 

 trade rather than being based on the accompanying quantitative tests 

 for elasticity, this fault was set up to cover apparent hardness or 

 stiffness that prevents an inspector from compressing the sponge to 

 any large extent. Ey strict definition, the fault should be labeled 

 "low compressibility, " but the word "springy" conveys more to the 

 average person. To reduce the number of faults, the author used this 

 term to cover low visual snap back due to hardness or stiffness and 

 also to cover the other occasional lack of snap back or springiness 

 encountered in relatively soft sponges that appear to be soggy. This 

 deadness is encountered occasionally in sponges that have been dried 

 at too high a temperature or that have been squeezed too drastically 

 in the cleaning step. The Florida Yellow sponges have received de- 

 merits due to their uniformly hard character, and an occasional sponge 

 of the other types has received some demerits for being soggy, 



R. Strength; easily split : — If the riffling step is modified 

 by first pressing the sponge tightly before the hands are rotated, a 

 splitting force is exerted that will tear open some sponges. The 

 Grass and Florida Tellow sponges often show this fault, but more often 

 it is accompanied by a lack of surface webbing in any sponge. A lack 

 of bottom webbing allows the sponge to be split easily from the bottom. 

 Several noncommercial sponges may owe their lack of development to 

 this fault. Judgement as to the proper relative rating can be ob- 

 tained only through experience, 



S. Brittle under pinch and pull .—-Grass, Florida Tellow, and 

 highly bleached sponges often fail under the test for brittleness, 

 which involves pinching a small tuft between fingernails of thumb 

 and forefinger followed by pulling and twisting to break off a portion. 

 Again, experience cannot be put into numerical description. Such 

 brittleness would be expected to be accompanied by poor wearing quali- 

 ties, 



T, Low water absorption .— If no quantitative tests are used, 

 the rating given this fault of low absorption of water indicates the 

 inspector's opinion as to the relative value of a particular type of 

 sponge, since the property of water absorption is one of the most im- 

 portant to the ultimate user of the sponge. Briefly, it consists of 

 an estimate of the relative weight of water that can be picked up by 

 the sponge on the first wetting. The writer suggests that this be 

 the first subjective test to be replaced by a quantitative one, 



U, Wet stiffness ; poor cleanability , — In looking for prop- 

 erties that would justify the low prices brought by the Grass and the 

 Florida Yellow sponges, the writer decided that wet stiffness was 

 one of the very important properties. Quantitative tests reported 

 later in this report verified this conclusion. The inspector judges 

 this property by the relative amount of water that can be squeezed 



2U 



