ART
BEAUTY & WELLNESS
CRAFT
CULTURE & HISTORY
ENTERTAINMENT
ENVIRONMENT
FOOD & DRINKS
REVERSE ENGINEERING
SCIENCES
SPORTS
TECHNOLOGY
WEARABLES
Youblob · CC0
Rubber Thread: One Long Strand Cut Spirally from Cured Sheet (Gibbons 1934)
The rubber in elastic webbing and braided elastic is not spun: it is cut. A thin cured sheet is wound on a big drum and a small fast circular knife, walked across the drum by a lead screw, cuts it into one long square strand. How fast the knife travels sets the thread's width. This is how Edwin Gibbons described the American practice in 1934.
Source: E. J. Gibbons, "Rubber Thread in Narrow Fabrics", India Rubber World, 1 July 1934. Starting from our cured rubber sheet and the tools are ours. Picture drawn by Youblob.
Intermediate
1 day
Instructions
1
1
Start from thin cured sheet
Start from thin cured sheet
Take thin vulcanised rubber sheet, hung up and dried. Gibbons's sheets were gauged in hundredths of an inch; for a square thread, cut it as wide as the sheet is thick (ours).
Materials for this step:
Natural Rubber Sheet1 as requiredTools needed:
Drying Rack
Digital Caliper 6-Inch2
2
Wind it on the drum
Wind it on the drum
Wind the sheet on a large drum (his were 6 to 7 feet across) and fasten the ends.
Tools needed:
Rubber Thread Cutting Machine3
3
Cut with the travelling knife
Cut with the travelling knife
Turn the drum very slowly and bring a small, high-speed circular knife against the rubber. A long lead screw carries the knife across the drum face; its speed against the drum sets the width of the cut, and so of the thread.
Tools needed:
Rubber Thread Cutting MachineDigital Caliper 6-Inch4
4
Tie, unwind and dust
Tie, unwind and dust
Tie the many cut ends together. As the drum is slowly unwound, dust the thread lightly with talc so the cut edges do not stick together.
Materials for this step:
Talcum Powder1 as requiredTools needed:
Rubber Thread Cutting Machine5
5
Wash, dry and chain
Wash, dry and chain
Wash and dry it again, then link it in a chain stitch for keeping: a "chain of rubber".
Materials for this step:
Water1 as requiredTools needed:
Drying RackMaterials
3- 1 as requiredPlaceholder
- 1 as requiredPlaceholder
- 1 as requiredPlaceholder
This blueprint makes
CC0 Public Domain
This blueprint is released under CC0. You are free to copy, modify, distribute, and use this work for any purpose, without asking permission.
Support the Maker by purchasing products through their Blueprint where they earn a Maker Commission set by Vendors, or create a new iteration of this Blueprint and include it as a connection in your own Blueprint to share revenue.