So What? About Paper

Article by Laura Murphy

 

There is a magic, a seeming alchemy, about creating something new out of something old, something surprising out of something mundane. Spinning is like that, as is papermaking. If you are unfamiliar with paper or papermaking, you might now be asking, “what does paper have to do with fibers?” The answer is--paper IS fibers!

Like spinning, papermaking involves preparing fiber, specifically cellulose (plant) fibers, and aligning them so that they form a new material. Unlike spinning, the change that takes place is chemical, not physical. Plant fibers form hydrogen bonds that hold the paper together; the closer and more numerous the bonds, the stronger the paper. Ah-- but I move too fast--

You can make recycled paper quite easily from old paper using a blender, screens, and vats of water, sheets and towels. Simply put, you shred the old paper, soak it in a tub of water overnight, blend it, pour it into a vat of water and pull it out with a screen, lay it onto a sheet, dry it-- and you have paper! There is more to it, but that is the most basic information.

The paper that you shred already has the lignin removed and contains sizing as well. Lignin is known as the “gunk” to many papermakers; it is the non-fibrous part of the plant that degrades the quality of paper. Sizing is an additive that makes paper water-resistant and easier to write on. There are numerous types of sizing; I most often use starch both in the vat and ironed in the surface, called internal and external sizing.

Making paper directly from plant materials is far more time-intensive. It is also more fun, interesting and, depending on your aesthetic, more beautiful. Spinners want their fibers lined up in parallel fashion; papermakers want just the opposite. Again, plant fibers make better paper when they cover more surface area, make more hydrogen bonds. Under a microscope, paper fibers appear more web-like than yarn or rope-like.

Any plant with high fiber content will make paper. Consequently, so will many of our clothes. Rarely do I throw out cotton t-shirts and sheets, denim jeans, old linen dresses. In fact, when I am on a papermaking tear (no pun intended), I beg others for their “unwearables”. While some plant fibers can be processed in a blender, old clothing, and most plant fibers must be processed in a special machine called a beater. I have a portable type beater made by New Zealand artist/inventor Mark Lander. Blenders chop fibers, beaters chop and fibrillate. Fibrillation is the process of separating into many fibers. This allows for greater numbers of hydrogen bonds and accounts for the greater strength in paper. Fibrillated plant fibers look a lot like when we open our spinning fibers in order to add to the draft, but in many more directions!

As mentioned before, preparing plant fibers involves cooking away the lignin. The selected plants are cut into inch long pieces and cooked in a caustic solution of soda ash and sometimes lye until the lignin is nearly dissolved and all that remains is the desired cellulose fibers. They must be rinsed until clean and the pH is nearly neutral. This can be tested simply with a pH strip. Once beaten, it is called-- paper pulp! You can add calcium carbonate to the pulp (in the vat preferably) to adjust for pH if needed. Remember, paper that is too acid or too alkaline (caustic) is not considered archival.

There are many tutorials on the web about how to make paper if you Google “how to make paper.” My hope is that I have piqued your curiosity about it and shown the relationship between paper arts and other fiber arts. Paper is an amazing medium. In addition to its obvious uses, it can be sewn and sculpted! I have over thirty papier-mache recipes. Once hardened, anything that you can do with wood, you can do with papier-mache--including sanding, sawing and carving. Ah... But that-- is another article for another day ;)

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