WATER-PROOFING PROCESS

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 55, 2 September 1916, Page 6

WATER-PROOFING PROCESS

FOR TENTS AND GREATCOATS

ALSO FOR SOLDIERS' BOOTS.

Some highly interesting as well as valuable experiments in water-proofing military tents and soldiers' greatcoats are being conducted at Featherston Camp, under the direction of Professor F. P. Worley, Professor of Chemistry at Auckland University. Professor Worley, accompanied by Surgeon-General Henderson, Director General of Medical Services, paid a special visit, to Featherston Camp on Thursday for the purpose of ascertaining how the tents and coats treated had fared. The results were found to be satisfactory as far as the experiments had gone.

■ Interviewed by a Post representative yesterday, Professor Worley stated that the water-proofing process and arrangements made at Featherston proved quite satisfactory. He had made similar experiments with the old, leaky bell tents at Narrow Neck Camp, Auckland, during the winter, and had obtained satisfactory results. The experiments at Featherston were being conducted on the same lines, only the tents were subjected to severer weather conditions! He hoped, as a result of what had been achieved up to the present,. that before long the difficulty of leaky tents at Featherston and Tauherenikau would be greatly reduced. The tents were immersed first in a* solution of common soap and then in one of alum. This had the effect of coating the fibre with an insoluble substance, which turned the water without destroying the' porosity of the material. Soldiers' greatcoats were being treated to the same process, and so far the experiments made promised to be! thoroughly satisfactory. The coats would not be thoroughly waterproof like oilskins, but their tendency to become wet would be much reduced, and the coats when wet would contain much less water. A similar waterproofing process was used in tho case of miners' overalls, the only difference being the use of bluestone in place of alum.

It may also be mentioned that all soldiers' boots being sent out from the Defence Stores, Wellington, are now water-proofed by being soaked in a special solution prepared at the Defence Stores. This water-proofing of boots at the Defence Stores has been going on for some months now, and the results up to the present are reported to have been distinctly good.