Last PAQ meeting I had the privilege of running the group’s Hollander Beater, processing my most recently cooked and cleaned paper mulberry pulp. In the past I have hand-beaten it, but was determined to give the mechanised processing a try (to see if I could).

The pulp floofed up into delicious clouds of softly frayed pulp after a few hours circulating in the beater. I took the beaten pulp home, rinsed it a couple of times and then pressed it into pulp storage sheets. I ladled 3 x 2L scoops of pulp into my old A3 mould and deckle, smoothing it off with my hands, then added them to my press, couching between. The batch made 6 such sheets.

After pressing, these pulp sheets were set to dry over the next week – when dry they are storage stash stable.

For the tissue session, I re-hydrated one of these sheets in a tall bucket, tearing it up until it was finely shredded. I then agitated it with my electric drill and a paint-stirrer attachment until it was separate and fluffy again. I brought the bucket of pulp and most of my sheet forming equipment to the PAQ meeting last Sunday and set up a bit of a production line.

I have a large vat (so I can easily move my A3 frame in it), and half-filled it with water. Then added 2 scoops of pulp to the water in the vat, along with half a bottle (about 100ml) of pre-prepared Methyl Cellulose (MC) gel and about 200ml of strained Okra mucilage. The MC was to act as an internal size for the paper (to help with the strength and crispness). The Okra mucilage acted as a suspension aid to keep the pulp from quickly sinking to the bottom of the vat.

After a thorough mix to fluff up and evenly distribute the relatively sparce pulp in the water, I was able to pull sheets by catching the “clouds” that so delicately hung in the water.

It was a delicate balance of the amount of pulp needed, but I only needed a small re-charge of the vat after 2 sheets, and pretty soon I was consistently pulling uniform thiiiin sheets with no holes.

On my bottom press board I lay a pad of flannelette, then a fine cotton couching cloth – on to which I couched the sheet. I then topped that with 2 more fine cotton couching cloths (creating a cloth-pulp-cloth sandwich). I built up a post of 13 sheets, exhausting myself and, more importantly, the fiber in the vat. I topped the post with another pad of flannelette and then the top board and then clamped it at high pressure for 4 hours.

Clean up, back home, I could then dismantle the now not dripping post and separate each of the sheets leaving them in their protective cotton sandwiches to resist dry slowly overnight. I have discovered that double-couching like this is the easiest way to “resist-dry” mulberry – the cotton top and bottom wicks out the water evenly so the resultant sheets emerge flat. I have tried drying on glass (it is a royal pain in the arse to get it off cleanly) and just air-drying (it crinkles up in unpredictable ways) so will continue using this technique as I get consistently flat results from it.

The most satisfying part of the process is peeling off the top and bottom cloths, leaving the thin, strong, crispy, translucent paper sheets.

I learned a LOT from this exercise. From previous experiments, I estimated I should get a dozen sheets from a single sheet pulp – I got 13, yay. The re-hydration/floofing up process is easy, repeatable and the fiber does not seem to be compromised in any way being stored dry in sheet form. Certainly pulp sheet storage is preferrable to having rotting buckets of wet fiber, or filling my freezer with fiber-bergs.

Just quietly, although I have been on the quest to make this sort of paper for nearly 2 years now, I am so chuffed that i made such beautiful sheets, and am now itching to fold it. I have also demonstrated I can reliably hand-ladle much larger sheets (limited only by screen size) so I can set my sights on larger projects and know I can achieve them with the relatively simple gear I have in my “studio”.

That said, my paper making “studio” is a pile of shit that sits under the house, gathering dust. I am not really interested in making commercial quantities of paper, and would not know how to go about selling it anyways, but I love that I am finally in the position of being able to make some of the paper I fold. This has been a long held goal.