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Understanding Small Scale Papermaking
The target audience is India. Nevertheless it is interesting reading and teaches how to make handmade paper among other things
I. INTRODUCTION
Papyrus, from which the word paper is derived, is known to have been in use as early as 3000 B.C. Developed in the Nile Valley, it was made of strips cut from the papyrus plant stem, soaked, and laid, first lengthwise, then crosswise, to form a mat. The mat was then pounded and pressed into a thin sheet. Later, similar processes elsewhere used other fibers such as silk.
True papermaking, which began in China about A.D. 105, uses an entirely different process than the preparation of papyrus. It
begins with rags, straw, bark, wood, or other fibrous materials
that are chopped or cut fine. The fibers are pounded or pulped
until they are separated from each other and mixed with water.
Then the fibers are lifted from the water in a sieve-like screen
that allows the water to drain away, leaving a thin mat of fibers.
The fiber mat, which can be dried in place or removed and
dried separately, becomes a sheet of paper.
The earliest recorded manufacture of paper is credited to one of
the first "purchasing officers," Ts'ai Lun, head of the Imperial
Supply Department of Emperor Ho of China. Ts'ai Lun experimented with a variety of materials: vegetable fibers, old hemp, cotton rags, old fishnets, and mulberry bark. The paper produced was cheap and durable and the surface was good.
The technology spread to Japan by the third century A.D. and
reached India in the seventh. Papermaking spread westward to
North Africa and finally reached Europe in the twelfth century
A.D.
Early European papers were made from linen or cotton rag. It was thick and rough, and the surface needed to be sized" with gelatin or the ink soaked in. Ulman Stromer set up a mechanized
papermill in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1390, using water-powered hammers for beating the material, a method already used by the
Chinese. The craft accompanied the early settlers to America.
True mechanization was not achieved until 1799, when the Frenchman Nicholas Robert built a machine with an endless wire mesh and a pair of squeeze rolls. The device was taken to England and marketed by two stationers, the Fourdrinier brothers. In 1804, Brian Donkin, a millwriqht-engineer, built the first successful papermaking machine, in Two Waters Mill, Hertfordshire, England, and another in America in 1827. Crude early designs improved steadily. By the end of the nineteenth century, Fourdrinier technology was widespread; machines just over 2 meters wide supplied 25 metric tons per day to the growing market for newsprint.
Modern machines form paper in a continuous ribbon or web, not a single sheet at a time as did the ancients. A good papermaker in the olden days could make enough sheets in a day to weigh about 90kg. Today, an average machine makes 90,000kg per day! Yet the process of making paper--separating fibers in water and draining them through a fine screen to form an interwoven mat that is then dried--is identical in principle. The actual formation of paper has been the same for almost 2,000 years.
I. INTRODUCTION
Papyrus, from which the word paper is derived, is known to have been in use as early as 3000 B.C. Developed in the Nile Valley, it was made of strips cut from the papyrus plant stem, soaked, and laid, first lengthwise, then crosswise, to form a mat. The mat was then pounded and pressed into a thin sheet. Later, similar processes elsewhere used other fibers such as silk.
True papermaking, which began in China about A.D. 105, uses an entirely different process than the preparation of papyrus. It
begins with rags, straw, bark, wood, or other fibrous materials
that are chopped or cut fine. The fibers are pounded or pulped
until they are separated from each other and mixed with water.
Then the fibers are lifted from the water in a sieve-like screen
that allows the water to drain away, leaving a thin mat of fibers.
The fiber mat, which can be dried in place or removed and
dried separately, becomes a sheet of paper.
The earliest recorded manufacture of paper is credited to one of
the first "purchasing officers," Ts'ai Lun, head of the Imperial
Supply Department of Emperor Ho of China. Ts'ai Lun experimented with a variety of materials: vegetable fibers, old hemp, cotton rags, old fishnets, and mulberry bark. The paper produced was cheap and durable and the surface was good.
The technology spread to Japan by the third century A.D. and
reached India in the seventh. Papermaking spread westward to
North Africa and finally reached Europe in the twelfth century
A.D.
Early European papers were made from linen or cotton rag. It was thick and rough, and the surface needed to be sized" with gelatin or the ink soaked in. Ulman Stromer set up a mechanized
papermill in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1390, using water-powered hammers for beating the material, a method already used by the
Chinese. The craft accompanied the early settlers to America.
True mechanization was not achieved until 1799, when the Frenchman Nicholas Robert built a machine with an endless wire mesh and a pair of squeeze rolls. The device was taken to England and marketed by two stationers, the Fourdrinier brothers. In 1804, Brian Donkin, a millwriqht-engineer, built the first successful papermaking machine, in Two Waters Mill, Hertfordshire, England, and another in America in 1827. Crude early designs improved steadily. By the end of the nineteenth century, Fourdrinier technology was widespread; machines just over 2 meters wide supplied 25 metric tons per day to the growing market for newsprint.
Modern machines form paper in a continuous ribbon or web, not a single sheet at a time as did the ancients. A good papermaker in the olden days could make enough sheets in a day to weigh about 90kg. Today, an average machine makes 90,000kg per day! Yet the process of making paper--separating fibers in water and draining them through a fine screen to form an interwoven mat that is then dried--is identical in principle. The actual formation of paper has been the same for almost 2,000 years.
31 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 19, 2010
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