Facts To Know About The Manufacturing Of Cork

By Author: Vikram Kumar
Total Articles: 9687
Comment this article

If you’ve heard about cork and want to learn more about this popular material, this article is for you. Within the last few years cork has garnered much interest with homeowners and interior decorators alike. Why, you ask. It’s simple. We present to you a great home building material whose pros far outweighs its cons.

Cork, an all-natural product, is produced from the bark of the Quercus Suber tree, also known as the cork oak tree. This species populates areas found mainly in Portugal and Spain, or around the Mediterranean Basin. China has also in the last few decades evolved a strain of the cork oak tree and began their own harvesting.

Only the bark is carefully harvested from the tree, a processed done by highly skilled artisans using hand tools. This is done in such a manner so that the tree is not damaged or injured. After the top layer of bark is stripped off, the tree then left alone to regenerate a new layer of bark. This practice will take up to about nine years before the regenerated bark is once again ready for harvesting.

To maintain the integrity of cork oak trees and to prevent ...
... over-harvesting, laws were passed during the 1930s that stipulated that the bark could be peeled from a tree only once every nine years. This allowed for the trees not only to regenerate, but to be left in peace until harvesting time. Moreover, to ensure that new growth could not be exploited, no tree that was less than twenty five years in maturity could be harvested of its bark for the manufacturing of cork.

Once harvested, the bark was sorted and stacked and left exposed to the elements for at least six months. Exposure to the elements created continuous changes that enhanced the façade and the quality of the bark. The next step was to grind the bark into smaller beads. These beads were then mixed together with a non-toxic adhesive and compressed under tremendous pressure or baked to produce planks or tiles of cork.

In order to create a variety of patterns and colors, manufacturers can choose to burn the cork before compressing. This charring process allows for the wide differences of colors. Also manufacturers could compress together different sizes and colors of granules together to create different affects. Both of these processes work in tandem to produce the wide array of colors and designs that can be seen in the cork flooring available today.

Cork is very durable as well as very lightweight. The cellular structure of cork allows its numerous chambers to be filled with compressible air. The shock absorbing quality makes it great for use in physical therapy centers and gyms. The sound absorption qualities make this an ideal choice for areas where silence is desired.

Cork is a renewable resource as only the bark is used and the tree itself regenerates and produces new bark. To keep it all natural and environmentally friendly, only finishes and adhesives that are water based are used.

iCork Floor offers a variety of cost effective solutions when you are looking for the perfect Cork Tile . Contact them for your requirements of cork products including the Cork glue down tile .