Felling old trees made large quantities of rubber wood available to the emerging garment and brick factories in the Phnom Penh region.
Sculptures from the late 1960's and 70's at Knoedler include elegant distorted cylinders or double-ended boat shapes made of rough fiberglass; among the recent works at Baumgartner are compressive rings and cylinders made of measured quantities of rubber, wax, concrete and steel (Ken Johnson).
His tools are bookbinder's glue, a metal instrument called a micro-spatula, a tongue-depressor-like implement called a bone folder, an X-Acto knife, rice paper, book cloth, acid-free tissue, and quantities of rubber bands, which he says are key to the operation.
This research study contributes to the further development and evolution of the dry process through the analysis of the effect of the digestion time (the contact time between the crumb rubber and the bitumen) and the quantity of crumb rubber on the mix design properties.
In this respect, an increase in the quantity of crumb rubber contributed to a corresponding increase in the amount of bitumen needed, and also caused the mix to become less compact.
Abir's profits rose with the increasing quantity and price of rubber, for the first two years (1892 94) the company recorded a total profit of 131,340 fr, this had increased almost twentyfold by 1898 when they recorded a 2,482,697 fr profit just for one year.
The figure may be underestimated due to significant quantities of natural rubber exported informally across borders (MoC 2014).
Nonetheless, this process has advantages, such as the potential to consume larger quantities of crumb rubber, thus resulting in greater savings in energy and natural resources.
To date, the rubber tree is still the only commercial source of natural rubber for its high production and quality of rubber.
