A natural way of acquiring rubber to propel a spear

This is a repost. I just wanted to have it here for reference.
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Our guns, slings and pole spears all depend on this one basic component, rubber, without which we couldn't spearfish underwater (except at point blank range). If it wasn't for industrial age technology would we be able to spearfish? All other components can be made up from basic materials. I remember reading that thin translucent tortoise shells were used instead of glass to make goggles. Just curious if there's a natural substitute for rubber tubing, like animal tendons in a bow..

Quote from phil herranen

latex comes from trees
phil

Can natural rubber be molded into a tube or strip that will have the necessary characteristics to propel a spear with force? Is this fabrication process something the average person can do on their own?

Quote from jackpine savage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanization

The Manufacturing Process

Processing the natural latex

1 The initial stage of manufacturing the harvested latex usually takes place on the rubber plantation, prior to packing and shipping. The first step in processing the latex is purification, which entails straining it to remove the other constituent elements apart from rubber and to filter out impurities such as tree sap and debris.
2 The purified rubber is now collected in large vats. Combined with acetic or formic acid, the rubber particles cling together to form slabs.
3 Next, the slabs are squeezed between rollers to remove excess water and pressed into bales or blocks, usually 2 or 3 square feet (.6 or .9 square meter), ready for shipping to factories. The size of the blocks depends on what the individual plantation can accommodate.
Mixing and milling

4 The rubber is then shipped to a rubber factory. Here, the slabs are machine cut (or chopped) into small pieces. Next, many manufacturers use a Banbury Mixer, invented in 1916 by Femely H. Banbury. This machine mixes the rubber with other ingredients—sulfur to vulcanize it, pigments to color it, and other chemicals to increase or diminish the elasticity of the resulting rubber bands. Although some companies don't add these ingredients until the next stage (milling), the Banbury machine integrates them more thoroughly, producing a more uniform product.
5 Milling, the next phase of production, entails heating the rubber (a blended mass if it has been mixed, discrete pieces if it has not) and squeezing it flat in a milling machine.
Extrusion

6 After the heated, flattened rubber leaves the milling machine, it is cut into strips. Still hot from the milling, the strips are then fed into an extruding machine which forces the rubber out in long, hollow tubes (much as a meat grinder produces long strings of meat). Excess rubber regularly builds up around the head of each extruding machine, and this rubber is cut off, collected, and placed back with the rubber going into the milling machine.
Curing

7 The tubes of rubber are then forced over aluminum poles called mandrels, which have been covered with talcum powder to keep the rubber from sticking. Although the rubber has already been vulcanized, it's rather brittle at this point, and needs to be "cured" before it is elastic and usable. To accomplish this, the poles are loaded onto racks that are steamed and heated in large machines.
8 Removed from the poles and washed to remove the talcum powder, the tubes of rubber are fed into another machine that slices them into finished rubber bands. Rubber bands are sold by weight, and, because they tend to clump together, only small quantities can be weighed accurately by machines. Generally, any package over 5 pounds (2.2 kilograms) can be loaded by machine but will still require manual weighing and adjusting.

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From the link I find this to be very relevant, no spearfishing before vulcanization was invented, 1839 We had guns before we had power bands..

Overview and history

Although vulcanization is a 19th century invention, the history of rubber cured by other means goes back to prehistoric times. The name "Olmec" means "rubber people" in the Aztec language. Ancient Mesoamericans, spanning from ancient Olmecs to Aztecs, extracted latex from Castilla elastica, a type of rubber tree in the area. The juice of a local vine, Ipomoea alba, was then mixed with this latex to create an ancient processed rubber as early as 1600 BC [1] .

The first reference to rubber in Europe appears to be in 1770, when Edward Nairne was selling cubes of natural rubber from his shop at 20 Cornhill, London. The cubes, meant to be erasers, sold for the astonishingly high price of 3 shillings per half-inch cube.

In the early 19th century rubber was a novelty material, but it did not find much application in the industrial world. It was used first as erasers, and then as medical devices for connecting tubes and for inhaling medicinal gases. With the discovery that rubber was soluble in ether, it found applications in waterproof coatings, notably for shoes and soon after this, the rubberized Mackintosh coat became very popular.

Nevertheless, most of these applications were in small volumes and the material did not last long. The reason for this lack of serious applications was the fact that the material was not durable, was sticky and often rotted and smelled bad because it remained in its uncured state.

Goodyear's contribution

Most textbooks point out that Charles Goodyear (1800–1860) invented vulcanization of rubber as used today by the addition of sulfur in high heat. Depending on what you read, the Goodyear story is one of either pure luck or careful research. Goodyear insists that it was the latter, though many contemporaneous accounts indicate the former.

Goodyear claimed that he discovered vulcanization in 1839, but did not patent the invention until June 15, 1844, and did not write the story of the discovery until 1853 in his autobiographical book Gum-Elastica. Meanwhile, Thomas Hancock (1786-1865), a scientist and engineer, patented the process in the UK on November 21, 1843, eight weeks before Goodyear applied for his own UK patent.

Quote from SeaWeed

I once saw a video of a Hawaiian guy using a polespear without a rubber. I guess that is how it was done before they had rubber. It was about 10-12' and he would throw it underwater. They caught some tropical looking fish.

If you wanted to propel a spear I think propeling it with a bow, like a crossbow, would be alot easier than making rubber.

Has anyone tried a crossbow underwater? You have that little one Davie, how about we give that a try?

Quote from SnpperWhisperer

Hans Hass just pushed/threw his spear, and got some nice fishies. We have a couple of species here we can do it with like John Dory, but I suspect we could also get others like that if we tried.

My first spearfishing experience was with a hand spear. I was following suit with a group of kids that would fish this way. It was a wood pole with short shaft attached to the tip, the barb made by cutting into the shaft and bending the flap away. The only fish they were able to get are ones that would hole up in shallow spaces, like squirrel fish and moray eels. That experience got me hooked on spearfishing.

Quote from Tin Man

In the spirit of your original question, wouldn't the crossbow need to be constructed of materials that pre-date high quality latex tubing? By that, I mean wouldn't fiberglass or metal bow limbs be considered "industrial age" technology?

I remember an old magazine cover where a diver was using a short bow where the fairly long spear projected through the middle of the limbs, rather than off to one side as would be the case with a normal bow. It was an artist's rendering, though, so I don't know if the approach was actually used.

Powerheads, or powder propelled spears, could probably have been used at least as far back as the invention of the percussion primer, but that was only slightly before industrialized rubber, I think.

I wondered about twisted rope as propulsion, ala the ancient ballista, but I figured that it would lose its spring when soaked for an extended time. For that matter, wouldn't a wood bow also lose its spring after a while underwater?

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I think crossbows were in use a long time ago. They must've been made of wood so nothing industrial age there. Unless the newer materials allowed the crossbow to be really small. Regardless I always wondered how the energy transfer underwater would be from wood limbs under tension to steel shaft.

Powder propelled spears are an interesting option but I don't think they could've been put to use before the advent of the bullet/case combination which doesn't predate vulcanization.

Quote from HurricaneBK

I'm sure i could get some hogfish by just pushing the spear into them when they are up against the reef. But its interesting how what many would consider to be a rather archaic means of hunting (spearfishing) is only possible because of relatively modern technology.

Sometimes I hear people refer to spearfishing as primitive hunting, the equivalent of hunting with bow and arrow underwater. No doubt spearfishing is a bit of an ego trip for me, or at least used to be, for this very reason. I keep myself in check though and remind myself that water is not really my element and I'm only able to take advantage of it due to like you said "relatively modern technology". Sometimes I don't want to accept that and this thread is a product of this feeling.

For me the kind of hunting that would make me feel most accomplished is something that I could achieve using materials that are found in nature. Pole spears and slings still depend on the fundamental component of rubber so they are not more attractive to me based on this principle. I don't like to be a hypocrite so I have to say I like spearfishing too much so I will continue doing it but IMO capturing prey with a spear freediving is easy.

Quote from fish impaler

springs...

Quote from Marco

This is an old thread, but springs were used in the early ages. I remember a Cressi Cernia spring loaded speargun my uncle had. I was loooooogn and very hard to load. He got nice fishes with that back in the 60's.

Quote from nrut

Just picked up on this today...

Howard Hill used to shoot his recurve underwater. Check out his book "Hunting the Hard way"

Also, just recently saw an article on the same thing in a recent copy of Traditional Bowhunter Magazine. I could probably get you more info on the article if you were interested.

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