SHEETING MACHINES.--The foregoing paragraphs have dealt entirely with machines for crepe preparation. Concerning machines for use in sheet-making, the ground has been mainly covered in Chapter IX. Where both crepe and sheet are made, it is permissible and advantageous to use the heavy smooth rolls for the rolling of the sheets, and it is only necessary to instal one or two light machines for placing a pattern on the rubber. Where a heavy battery does not exist, light machines with smooth rolls may be employed satisfactorily. Even engine-power is not necessary for the preparation of excellent sheets, but the output is limited where hand-power only is employed. Estates are known on which upwards of 1,000 lbs of sheet rubber are made daily with hand-power machinery in one station. Beyond this figure, it is deemed advisable to instal a small engine, say of 7-9 horse-power. This is ample to drive a battery of three smooth-roll machines and two markers, and yet have sufficient reserve to actuate a small pump for the water supply. LUBRICATION OF MACHINES.--It must always appear to those inexperienced in engineering matters that existing methods for lubricating rubber machinery are distinctly crude, when one considers the delicacy of the material to be prepared. Many existing machines are still lubricated with oil, which has to be administered in generous quantities. Generally, such machines have been so designed that the excess of oil may find an easy passage into the tray which receives the rubber. If not, it drops just outside the tray to the floor, and is washed away in great gouts. Even where grease-cap lubricators are fitted it is common to find that the excess can often be transferred from the bearings to the trays and so to the rubber. One would have expected from the attention which is being given to machinery for rubber estates that some improvement in lubrication methods would have been devised. It is probable, however, that a great deal of the disabilities attaching to present methods of lubrication might be obviated if closer attention were given to the actual operation of the lubricators. Coolies should not be allowed to handle them, and the responsibility should be placed upon a foreman or the engine-driver.