74 Indian Forest Records. [Voi,. ^11 
manufactured in small factories where the owner is either himself a 
workman or personally supervises the work. The cost of the nands, 
stoves and other implements is so small that the eight annas added 
above to make the round figure Rs. io more than covers the interest 
on capital expenditure. The large manufacturer certainly employs 
highly paid supervising staff, but his outturn is so large that the actual 
incidence per maund is small and his expert supervision enables him to 
produce shellac of high quality, the extra value of which more than 
covers the cost of expert supervision. The cost of manufacture can 
therefore be fairly estimated at an average of Rs. io per maund of 
shellac. 
And now with regard to the raw material. The quality of 
stick-lac varies so much that it is always sold and bought on an 
estimate of the amount of biuli lac or of grain-lac which it contains. 
The former is clean stick-lac free from twigs and dirt; the latter has 
already been described in the preceding chapter. Both biuli and 
grain-lac give a known and constant yield of shellac to the manu¬ 
facturer ; the chief variations are those due to quality or season. The 
following are the calculations commonly adopted in conversion :— 
Biuli Lac . 
One 
maund 
Kusmi ari yields 32 — 33 
seers 
grain - 
>» 
99 
Jethwi „ „ 
3i 
99 
» 
D 
f 1 
Baisakhi,, ,, 
26—28 
99 
» 
>> 
9 1 
,, Phunki,, 
30 
99 
)) 
»» 
99 
Katki ari ,, 
16—20 
99 
»» 
9 9 
Phunki ,, 
26—28 
99 
»» 
Grain-lac. 
One maund Baisakhi or Katki grain-lac yields 30 seers of shellac. 
„ „ Kusmi or Jethwi ,, ,, 36 „ „ 
Of course in the more careless methods of TN manufacture the 
inclusion of dirt, grit, etc., in the shellac will increase the yield. TN 
is, however, rarely made only from stick-lac ; kiri , molamma> and 
passewa are nearly always included in the formulae. 
As the value of shellac is always fluctuating the manufacturers 
use calculating tables which show the price they can afford to pay 
for stick-lac against each Calcutta TN quotation. 
In the case of many manufacturing industries, the bulk of the 
manufactured goods are sold forward, often over periods of weeks or 
even months. The manufacturer bases his quotation, firstly, on 
[74] 
