Spouts and Tubing
Maple sugaring dates back several hundred years ago when sugaring was really a process of trial and error. The first people to experiment with maple sugaring were the Native Americans who used wooden spouts, rocks, or sumac to tap with. Later, Europeans would cut deeply into the trees with axes to release the syrup, and instead of effectively tapping, most of the trees would die. Since then, spouts have evolved; the wooden spouts changed in size and later then developed into a metal spout. Metal spouts proved more effective as the size was relatively smaller compared to the wooden spout which resulted in less damage to the tree. The next addition was metal tubing attached to the metal spouts. The metal tubing made the process easier because the syrup would all go back to one location so, you would not have to bring buckets back to your pans. The drawback was that it often got destroyed as animals such as deer would often break the tubing which was only held up by sticks. Soon metal was replaced with both plastic spouts and tubing.
The plastic spouts were often black which attracted heat and would create better flow of the sap and signal to the tree that is was time to heal up. The inside diameter was 7/16 which allowed the tree to heal quicker once the spout was removed. The plastic tubing first used was surgical tubing which allowed animals to pass under it, but when it was stretched out the inside diameter of the tubing would become more narrow. Sugar makers then moved on to a type of PVC tubing which was able to handle the stress of nature but still retain its shape. Several different sizes of tubing were developed starting off with a 5/16 line, the smallest line, which could hold approximately 10 taps per line. Off of that is the 3/4 line which can hold 300 taps a followed by the main line which is 1 inch to 1 1/4 inch and can hold about 1,000 taps. One of the most recent developments is the health spout which is allows the tree to recuperate from the tapping rapidly. The health spout has an inside diameter of 5/16 which allows for just as much sap flow as any bigger whole without the negative effects on the tree. Sugar makers are now switching to a health spout that is stainless steel because it has been proven that the flow of the sap lasts longer with the stainless steel spout.
