One of the most troublesome deficiencies of standard GR-S, in so far as product fabrication is concerned, is the inherent lack of tackiness or the incapability of laminated and spliced surfaces to flow and knit together easily. This was especially bothersome from 1942 to 1944, when the scarcity of natural rubber forced fabricators to use a synthetic polymer before they had developed satisfactory methods and equipment to compensate for its deficiencies. Early in 1942, in anticipation of a later scarcity of fats and oils suitable for making the soap used for emulsification, the several groups working on polymer development problems intensified their efforts to find emulsifying agents which could be made from noncritical domestic materials. Rosin was one of these. Early attempts to use it were unsuccessful, however, because the polymerization reaction was strongly retarded. Later the Hercules Powder Company and The B. F. Goodrich Company, working together, found that the retarding effect could be greatly reduced with the use of disproportionated rosin previously referred to as dehydrogenated rosin. (The treatment given to the rosin results in a molecular disproportionation of the hydrogen, with the elimination of the conjugated double bonds accountable for much of the inhibiting effect on the polymerization reaction.) This work made rosin available for use in the event of an actual scarcity of fats and oils of good quality.

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