Artisans Angkor
When the worms have grown enough, they are put in baskets. From there, they will spin their cocoons in five days and will produce about three hundreds meters of silk each. The cocoons are then put in sunlight to avoid them undergoing their metamorphosis into mature moths. However, 20% of them reach the breeding process and the female moths will lay and hatch its eggs within nine to twelve days.
The cocoons are soaked in hot water in order to soften the sericin (also known as silk gum) which coat the fibres and stick the cocoons together. Silk threads are then unwound and reeled together to produce a single thread. Weavers at Angkor Silk Farm make both raw silk and fine silk that do not have the same texture at all. Sericin has not been completely removed from raw silk threads, which will give a rougher texture to the fabric at the end.
Gonometa postica
The species has become notable for producing a fine quality wild silk in its cocoon. The cocoons are harvested commercially in Namibia, Botswana, Kenya and South Africa, and the species also occurs in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. An Oxford University research team found that the cocoon surfaces are covered with calcium oxalate, hindering their commercial utilisation. They discovered and patented a method known as demineralizing using a warm solution of EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), softening the cocoons by dissolving the sericin, permitting the silk to be unravelled with no appreciable loss of strength. Cocoons are also sexually dimorphic, with those of females being roughly twice the size of those of males, thus yielding more silk. Sex ratios in natural populations will clearly play a large role in the harvesting of cocoons.