Fig. 5. Silking force and tensile properties of fibres retrieved from a forced silking process characterized by low silking force. (A) Silking force vs position along the silk fibre obtained from a silking process at 1 mm s^–1 reeling speed. The numbered intervals identify the samples shown in B and C. (B) Force–displacement curves of the silk samples obtained in the forced silking process shown in A. Base length=20 mm. For A and B, nominal reeling/test conditions were T=20°C, relative humidity=40%. (C) Stress–strain curves obtained by re-scaling the force–displacement curves in B using the individual cross-section of each sample. The upper and lower limits of the range of tensile properties exhibited by naturally spun (NS) fibres, and the stress–strain plots of maximum supercontracted (MS) fibres and typical forcibly silked (FS) fibres are plotted as dotted lines to allow comparison. In B and C, samples are identified by a number, indicating the reeling interval in which they were spun, as labelled in A.