We Keep the stock of "Arami-urushi (raw urushi)" ,being particular about home-made and sell products. We head for selling Urushi you can lacquer proudly. Let me introduce the flow of home-made here.
The flow of home-made
Chinese Urushi (lacquer) is imported in barrels (25kg) separated by where they are from.
Chinese Urushi (lacquer) differs according to its producing area, weather in the year it was taken and Chinese exporters affect the quality significantly.
(In case of Japan Urushi, who gather changes the quality.)
We will check its color, scent, dryness, tights, brightness.
Scent is one of the most important factors for Urushi.
We consider checked Urushi belong to type of which Urushi(raw urushi, transparent urushi, black urushi) and compound them.
The process of manufacturing "Black Urushi"
Previous day of refining, we add iron powder to raw urushi and mix them.
Urushi and iron make a chemical reaction, bubbles and become Gray.
Put Urushi compounded with iron powder previous day into the machine for refining.
We do "Nayashi(to even out components of urushi)"at first.
We do "Kurume(to heat doing Nayashi)" after that.
We use gas nowadays. Charcoal fire were used in old days.
It takes some hours.
Our store being located in the city, we start this work from early morning because of smell.
The whole process time of "Kurome" change to affected by day's weather, temperature and humidity.
We observe Urushi using a spatula, checking water-content.
In general, in the state of coarse urushi, it is 20～30% water-content. However, by "Kurome", it decreases to 2～3% water-content.
Next, we filtrate "kuromed" urushi.
Centrifuge is the mainstream now but we use not centrifuges but the pressing machine.
We put cotton into "kuromed"Urushi (to get rid of dusts over urushi).
We put urushi containing cotton covered with cloths into the sqeezing machine.
Check the color ("Tuke"), dryness, tights, brightness.
After packing by the quantity customers need, we send.
