by Tim Falconer ([email protected])
Toronto's Viceroy Reliable Group, which sells 2.5 million pucks a year in Canada, has been in the trade since the 40s. The recipe for a hockey puck is relatively simple.

Step 1 : Take natural rubber, synthetic rubber and a filler (usually coal dust), and you've got 90% of your basic ingredients. Toss in some additives such as sulphur and an anti-oxidant, which help in the baking, or curing process, and you're ready to go.

Step 2 : Pour the stuff into an automatic mixer, called a Banbury, then push it through a form in an extrusion process. Presto! You have metre-long soft rubber "logs," which you then slice up into slugs, called preforms.

Step 3 : You take these little devils and stick them in a four-deck moulding press, 27 to each level. Then you steam-heat the press to a toasty 150 degrees C. Let the pucks cure for 22 minutes.

Step 4 : Remove your pucks, which have little dimpled sides, to make them handle better on hockey stick. Trim off any flash (overflow rubber left over from the mould), and you're ready to silk-screen the final product to taste. Individual items serve two teams of six.
 

From "How Hockey Works" (Equinox, January/February,1994).

Copyright 1994 by Tim Falconer ([email protected]). Not to be republished or retransmitted for profit without the consent of the author. All Rights Reserved.