RAMIE FIBER PRODUCTION 9 



FIBER PREPARATION 



The Chinese farmer prepares his own ramie for sale as China grass. 

 In the Orient this work is considered as part of the farming operation. 

 There are probably many variations in the methods used by the 

 Chinese in decorticating ramie. This consists of the separation of the 

 fiber from the stalk and cleaning, so that the final product has had 

 the outer skin of the stalks peeled or stripped off and the adhering 

 plant tissue, which contains the fiber, scraped from these peelings. 

 The tissues removed from the fiber consist of the brownish outer bark, 

 the adhering cortical tissue, and much gum. The Chinese method is 

 best accomplished when the material is fresh, and the peeled ribbons 

 are kept in water until scraped. Crude implements of bone or sharp 

 bamboo are used for scraping. After cleaning, the fiber is dried, but 

 as might be surmised, it contains impurities present chiefly in the form 

 of gums, which harden and make the fiber stiff and bind the ultimate 

 fiber cells closely together in strands. 



In the United States when the establishment of ramie as an agri- 

 cultural crop has been considered, it has been realized that the Chinese 

 hand-labor preparation involves a step in which American labor would 

 not be able to compete on a cost basis. If the industry is to be suc- 

 cessful here, a method must be developed to accomplish the decorti- 

 cation more economically. 



For many years attempts have been made to perfect a machine 

 that would take the place of hand decortication of ramie. Some 

 machines have been invented to prepare the dry stems and some 

 primarily to w T ork the green stems, as it is the green stems that are 

 prepared by the Chinese. Each method has certain advantages and 

 disadvantages. Although a number of machines have been built, 

 few, if any, have combined production and quality, and therefore, 

 machines have not been adopted in commercial production. Although 

 machines have been advocated for use in countries other than the 

 Orient, most such countries have no commercial production of ramie 

 and frequently little market for the prepared fiber. As far as is 

 known, the only machine-prepared China grass is produced in the 

 Philippine Islands. A small quantity has been produced there since 

 about 1935. New uses must be developed and the fiber must be 

 prepared cheaper than the Chinese article so that it can compete 

 with other fibers before its culture is more widely advocated. 



YIELDS 



The yield of ramie stalks and the percentage of fiber may vary 

 widely. There exist many misleading statements about yields, as 

 they are frequently calculated from green material about which dry 

 weights are unknown. Reports from China are variable, and aver- 

 age annual acre yields range from 400 to 700 pounds of prepared 

 China grass. 



At harvest under favorable conditions the plants contain a very 

 high percentage of moisture, frequently above 70 percent. In addi- 

 tion, the leaves, which contain no fiber, may represent up to 50 percent 

 of the harvested ramie by weight. If ramie is prepared for fiber by 



