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Updated: June 20, 2025
After the trees have been tapped the latex is collected in carefully cleaned tin buckets, brought to the factory and strained into huge earthenware tubs. This soft mass of rubber is carefully floated out of the pan onto a table, where it is rolled on both sides for a few minutes with a wooden rolling-pin to squeeze out the excess of water and acid.
The latex is strained and mixed with some acid, usually acetic, in order to coagulate or thicken it. It is then run between rollers, hung in a drying house, and generally in a smokehouse. The rubber arrives at the factory in bales or cases. First of all it must be thoroughly washed in order to get rid of sand or bits of leaves and wood. A machine called a "washer" does this work.
The exact method of tapping varies, but usually it is begun as two slanting grooves that converge to form a V. The latex oozes from the freshly cut bark, runs down the converging grooves to their point of union, and is caught in a small glass cup or other vessel suspended under a tiny spout at the apex of the V. The method of tapping shown in the photograph is different from this somewhat, though the principle is the same.
The first V is cut several feet from the ground, and the amount that is gouged from each side of the V each day is so very thin that it will be months before the apex of the V reaches the ground, by which time the regeneration of the first cuts will be well under way. After the flow of latex has ceased for the day a narrow strip hardens along each groove, like gum on a cherry tree.
It is a cheerful sight to see the workers, men and women, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, trooping out from their quarters to begin the day's work. The tapping must be done early in the day, for the latex or rubber juice stops flowing a few hours after sunrise. When the trees reach eighteen inches in girth at a point eighteen inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping.
These little strips of rubber, with bits of adherent bark, as well as any drops that may have fallen to the ground, are collected in bags and carried to the factory to be made into sheets of cheap grades of commercial rubber. The white lines are the latex running down the grooves into the glass cup at the bottom.
Later in the morning the workers make the rounds of the trees with large milk cans, gathering the latex from the cups. When the cans are full they are carried to a collecting station, called a Coagulation Shed. It is as clean and well kept as a dairy. Here the latex is weighed, and when each collector has been credited with the amount he has brought, it is dumped into huge vats.
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