• Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-55
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• 1981

Silk textile finishing has been studied for many years by many workers in order to meet more utilities for various endusers. Such studies, however, could not be successful because any natural fibers are hardly change their natures by artificial treating methods. Textile finishing is of course to improve the mechandise qualities and the poor natures of silk so that it may be available as the best textile fiber in the world. Sometimes, famous trade marked textile plays more power than its quality in the silk market, nevertheless, this should be over line of research activities. Meantime, the silk demand has been also transferred from ladies stocking to other clothes since nylon or other synthetic fibers were developed. That is why, the extension of silk demand should be developed by various research works. Specially, silk is known as difficult textile to handle it during washing or ironing process which happened to depress down the silk usage for house wives. In order to solve such problems, the reporter has been worked for many years and now, he believes that he has developed a proper finishing method to coversuch problems. The developed finishing method may be said to eligible with economical aspect and shorten the dry duration after water washing in half against normal silk textile without harming the specific silk nature. As all of us know, silk fiber starts to denature since it was spinned by silkworm and the fiber is formed as overlapped "S" type curves during its concooning process. After it is made as raw silk or sericin silk, it shows as straight line form, but it changes in to waved form in case refining or degumming process in order return to its original spinned form. Such nature is continued during its textile form and ends with hard ironing nature than other textile fibers. Mean while, the silk fiber keeps to continue its denaturing and this is iniciated by repeat of washing and drying which takes many years to reach its final stage, The reporter has found the iniciating denature of silk by his finishing process, with out heat, decreasing the swollen nature which ended with shortening the drying duration after wash. Each washing was carried out by soaking the previously weighed sample in cold water for one hour, then pressed the sample for ten minutes to eliminate its free water component before weighing with same condition. According to this, the treated silk showed much denaturing after the finishing, but the standard silk progressed the denaturing by and by with the repeat of washing and drying, finally reached the same swollen degree of treated silk, Such treating result explains that the treated silk happened to be stebilized nature by the treating immediately. On the other that the treated silk happened to be stebilized nature by the treating immediately. On the other hand, standard silk may reach to such condition by the time of worn out clothes after repeat of washing and drying for many years while the clothes will be no more useful. The decreased swelling nature has brought about the drying period in half against standard silk after all. Not only the tests of tenacity and elongation but also crease resistance recovery, stiffness and shrinkage tests were carried out after each washing and drying which he has found better result on the treated silk textile against the standard silk. The most important thing was to keep the textile feeling of silk by such finishing work before improve any poor nature of silk. The general silk has a nature to absorb smoke or dirt from its surrounding air and reaches to dirty color shade upon such exposure, but the treated one has improved such nature because of its artificial denaturing, another word, it keeps clean longer than the normal silk. Many previous finishing works could improve some specific nature of silk, but it happened to deprave other important natures. The reporters work is, however, specialized to improve the silk to be useful as Wash and Wear Silk without harming its standard natures. So far, this work happened to be a overall innovative finishing method of silk textile.