HOT WATER BOTTLES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 15, 16 October 1942, Page 3

HOT WATER BOTTLES

are being pounded up for THE SEA, LAND AND AIR FRONTS

Britain is looking round for every available ounce of scrap rubber.

Most of it, is being found in old motor tyres. But the housewives are joining in with tyres from their prams, old rubber sponges, garden hose, bathroom mats ancl even hot water bottles.

If tlie scrap is reinforced with cotton or otherwise the foreign substance is. first burned out by an alkali "digester.'" What remains is put through another strainer which incidentally draws out any metal that may remain. Then the rubber is pounded, refined, ironed, rolled into sheets, and so ready at last for a dozen or two new incarnations. The Navy needs millions of miles of rubber insulated cables. Rubber is used, in the de-gaussing equipment to protect merchant ships against mines. Tliirty-live Churchill tanks eat up 55cwt!s of it; 3001 bs of it go into a 3.7 A.A. mobile gun. The R.A.F. need it for their landing wheels, to protect their petrol tanks, for de-icing equipment, for their dinghies, and for the "Mae West" .jacket.

Apart from ordinary tyres there is the bullet-proof variety; there is anti-gas clothing, ground sheets and life-saving jackets. In short, the British housewife's hot Avater bottle may find, itself appearing ajmost anywhere on the war front from a paratroop helmet sailing doAvn into Europe to a barrage balloon in the London sky.