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How to make paper
How To Make Paper
This method is based on my own experiments. I?ll update this as I
gain new skills. Right now, it is based on readily available (free)
equipment. The end product will be soft, thick, rough paper.
--Maggot
Ingredients
Pulp Matter
A screen, windowscreen or finer, preferably in a frame
Large bucket (5gal is good)
Handheld mixer or paint mixer on an electric drill
Rags or towels
Pulp Matter
I started out with newspaper. Put into the bucket and let soak
in hot water for a few hours. Break it up with a stick. Eventually,
the mixture will be soft enough to break up with electrical mixer.
For best results, start off with a little newspaper and make sure it is
all broken up (no visible pieces.) The fibers will tend to clump up
into soft clumps naturally, so don?t worry about that. Just make sure
that those balls are not solid chunks of newspaper. You should not be
able to feel any hard bits of paper when you run your hand through the
mixture. The mixture should be a gray slurry with the consistency of
soup or gravy.
The ink will come off the newspaper and stain your hands and the
bucket. The ink is in little droplets of oil and have a slight charge:
they will adhere to skin and plastic. It gets the equipment dirty, but
leaves the fibers pretty clean. [1]
The newspaper fiber clumping can probably be avoided by
thickening the water. I have been told that fabric starch will do
this. I suspect that cooking something thick into it, like flour or
cornstarch or potato starch (chopped potatoes in a cloth bag), would
work just as well.
I have read that you can also use vegetable pulp to make paper as
well. Broccoli, carrots, flowers, celery, asparagus, etc. Probably
the best ones are fibrous veggies like broccoli. You take the veggies
and a little water and run it all through the blender until it is
smooth. I guess that paper made this way will be edible. You should
also try to save the juice and cook it into a broth (V8!)
Method
Mix up the pulp mixture until even and dip the screen into the
bucket. Dip it in pretty deep until you can?t see it. Mix the pulp up
with your hand so it covers the screen. Bring the screen up swishing
it a little: this allows water to get thru the screen and keeps the
slurry from sliding off the screen.
Let the water drip out; be careful not to jiggle the screen
because the slurry will shift and slide making gaps in the paper. The
stuff on the screen should be pretty even, but it?s not possible (as
far as I know) to get it totally smooth; the pulp tends to clump a
little, but the less clumping the better.
Dry the pulp out a little by wiping the underside of the screen
with a cloth. Now you have a wet sheet of paper on a screen. You have
a few ways to dry it out. One way is to put another piece of screen on
top and press down on the ?sandwich? with cloth. The excess water can
be pressed out with a rolling pin or full beer can. Peel the top
screen off and the paper can be peeled off if it is thick enough.
Another method is to transfer it from the screen onto a metal or glass
plate. Just put the plate over the screen and then invert the whole
thing. The paper will stick to the smoother surface. You can then
warm up the plate in a very slow oven. This method will not work if
the paper is too thin, as it will stick and tear. The last method is
to leave it on the screen to let it dry. You can put it in the oven if
the screen is not plastic. (I like the first method).
You can speed up dehydrating with a low oven or a dehydrator. I
put the paper over the coils behind my micro-fridge where it dries in a
few hours.
Notes
* You can manipulate the paper before it dries: papier mache, paper
molds.
* You can vary the thickness of the paper. One way is to build a
screen with a high walled frame; this prevents the slurry from flowing
off the screen. Imagine three millimeter thick newsprint!
* Experiment with long threads in the paper to act as reinforcement.
* The paper will be dull. To get a shine, you have to ?polish? it with
something smooth like a small smooth stone or a round plastic cap.
Polish the paper after it dries. I imagine that mixing clay into the
slurry will assist in making shiny paper (just like shiny Hopi pottery
which is also polished with a stone).
[1] I suspect there is a way to de-ink the paper by taking advantage of
the fact that the ink droplets are charge. For example, you could run
a DC current across two plates and one should collect all the ink.
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