Papermaking part one

Since today is warm and not too windy, a good day to make a post (stack) of paper. Also my produce box will be here a day late, because the crew got a day off to vote, good. So this is Saturday's planned work brought forward. Making a post of paper. Tech alert for names of gear coming up.

First to assemble the materials and tools

The container is my paper vat, which is a $2 dishpan. Since it will be filled with water, important not to oversize it for a one person operation. Water's heavy. It means i\I use small molds and deckles, see later, but them's the breaks.

In the container, left, sheets of processed fiber, here second cut cotton linters from Carriage House.. It takes serious equipment to process cotton fiber  for paper, such as a Hollander beater, and other such impressive stuff. You can access that in your college studio courses, then later your personal studio finds this handy instead. It makes a beautiful white paper, crisp. There's also abaca (banana) fiber sheets under there, for a softer, creamier colored paper.  You can mix the two, too, for different effects.

Today I used a single sheet of the cotton linters. This is cotton fiber at stage two: first it's picked, then ginned to remove the seeds, then processed again, and this is the result. It's totally ph balanced, will survive centuries, totally safe material. I'm saying this because you see it in my kitchen. 

On the right, in the vat, are molds and deckles for actually making the sheets of paper. I made my first one from scratch way back when I studied it, but it needs a bigger vat, so I use these. The shape of the mold gives you the shape of the paper. Whatever shape you want, just create the mold to suit. Embroidery hoops are useful, and hold the screening nicely. And the plastic stitching canvas is handy, and works fine. The deckle is a frame you hold onto the mold when you submerge it in the pulp. It gives an edge (deckle edge) to your paper sheet, if you want a uniform shape.

And here are inclusions

Lint, courtesy of Joanne's loom, also cotton

Flowers, some from friends' gardens, some from a birthday bouquet last year. These will be picked up on the mold as you bring it to the surface, and they'll bond with the fiber. The rose petals on the top left smelled wonderful when I opened the bag. They've all been in the freezer for months.

And here's the dish, which used to be a roasting pan,  to hold the dripping wet paper, and the felts to flop it onto. Some felts are made of felt, but mine are interfacing, works a treat. I've been using these about forty years.

Blender, vital, you need this, and they burn out under the stress, so always looking for secondhand ones. This, before you ask, is specifically for paper, never food. My food blender is separate.

Then the process, see the testing to determine if enough breakdown has happened.

You tear up the cotton linters sheet, a few pieces per blenders worth, blend till reduced as you see above, a few minutes

Then keep adding each batch to the vat. I like to use lukewarm water, for the sake of the papermaker, the paper doesn't care.

Stir the pulp around with your hand gently before sinking the mold under the surface. I didn't use a deckle, that's a frame, here, because I didn't want a geometrically rectangular piece, wanted a looser edge. I made this mold from a picture frame to which I attached screening.

Let it drain briefly

Then in one swift move turn the mold over onto the waiting felt and press gently to release the fiber pulp from the mold, so you can use it again.

Here's green lint lifted up into a sheet

And flowers similarly

I splashed a bit more pulp over the flowers after this.  Just wanted you to see them first.

Now we're outside with the pan of dripping paper, all interleaved with felts.

Here's the paper dance! You put the pan on top of the stack of felts, and tread gently about to press as much water out as possible, to speed up the drying, also it's fun to dance.

Then lift each felt, with its paper piece, and lay it out to dry. I've left this post on the felts, but you can also slap off the paper onto a shiny surface like windows, mirrors, appliances, if you want a smooth side and a rougher side, peeling the felt off the paper, leaving the paper behind on the glass. When it's dry it will peel off. But it will obligingly stay in place till you peel it off.

I was a bit tired at this point,  a lot of lifting involved, so I just laid it out. When it's dry, maybe tomorrow, I'll peel the paper off the felts and we'll see how it goes. My skills were a bit rusty, took a few sheets to get the movements back.  This is the output, ten sheets, one's hidden, from one of those small sheets of processed fiber.

There are all sorts of things you can add to change the texture, make more transparent effects, and today I did the simplest because I felt like it!

This is much simpler than when I make paper from local foliage, such as iris and daylily, or onionskins, or grasses, where you harvest and wash and cut and boil endlessly to make a pulp, which you blend with water as above,  to which I often add a bit of abaca fiber for more flexibility. 

This makes good paper, though. It's cool to know how to do it both ways. You'll notice that I work with original fiber or plant material. I never add in commercial paper, because the acid content is at odds with the purpose of a pure paper.

When you're finished the pulp in the vat, you're left with what looks like an innocent dishpan of water. Do not, not, pour it down the sink.  It has cotton fibers throughout, and it will gum up your plumbing very expensively.  But it's okay to toss it outside on the earth, quite harmless.

Sometimes you see an activity described as papermaking, when you tear up and  blend  commercial paper, magazines, colored copy paper, that kind of thing. In fact you're not paper making, you're doing something else that's fun, especially for kids, you're recycling, making new from old, always a good thing.

 It's good to explain to kids that this is recycling, a good thing, but not related to true papermaking, which they can also learn to do.  I've taught quite young kids the skills, I describe here, complete with the history of the fiber, except that I wielded the blender.  But they were pretty adept at making the paper, and loved smacking it off onto the windows!

You can never forget, when you use cotton, that the cotton crop has come at a terrible cost to many of our population, and to treat it with honor, as we wish they'd been treated with honor.