Industry
Part of Independent paper makers, explained by collections: no watchlist needed here
Fiber preparation stages for independent paper makers
Fiber preparation stages for independent paper makers: steaming, stripping, cooking, rinsing and beating, with Japanese practice and starting fibers.
What to take away
- This describes published fiber preparation practice for independent paper makers, which is the part of the craft that decides everything downstream.
- Fiber preparation is most of hand papermaking. Sheet forming is the short part.
- Traditional Japanese practice separates steaming, stripping, cooking and beating into distinct stages.
- Cheap paper exists because pulping wood got solved, and knowing when tells you what your stock is.
Preparation is the craft
Beginners picture the vat and the mold. Experienced papermakers spend most of their time before that point, because a badly prepared pulp cannot be rescued by good forming.
The stages are consistent across traditions: harvest and dry the fiber, cook it in an alkaline bath of soda ash or caustic soda until it separates easily, rinse it in clean water, then break it down with a Hollander beater or, in Japanese practice, a naginata beater, keeping fibers long rather than cutting them short.
What traditional practice actually involves
The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking's exhibit on washi fiber preparation sets out the sequence. Bundles of harvested trees are steamed in a barrel for two to two and a half hours to loosen the bark.
Gampi is the exception. It is harvested from February to May, when the plant is full of water and the bark comes away without steaming.
The bark is stripped immediately after steaming, when it is softest and most flexible. It is then gathered into bunches and hung to dry for several days, at which point it is called kurokawa, or black bark.
Note the timings and the seasonality. This is agricultural work with a papermaking step at the end; steaming kozo and mitsumata is a social event because it takes a village.
The industrial shortcut
Industrial pulping is the shortcut that skips every stage above. Oregon State University's exhibit page on the paper revolution dates the change.
Rag cloth was the main western paper source from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. Mechanical and chemical wood pulping was developed in the 1850s, and by 1867 the basic method was in place.
Wood was much cheaper than crop fibers such as cotton, so paper and paper goods got cheaper and readership grew.
Every sheet you buy today sits on one side or the other of that line.
The transferable sequence
- Choose fiber for the sheet you want, not for what is available.
- Cook in an alkaline bath—soda ash or caustic soda—until fiber separates without force.
- Rinse in clean water, then clean by hand. This is tedious and it is where quality is decided.
- Beat with a Hollander beater, or a naginata beater for Japanese bast fibers, watching fiber length rather than time.
- Charge the vat and keep it charged, so late sheets match early ones.
What to try first
Cotton linter is the reasonable starting fiber because it needs no cooking and forgives inconsistent beating. Move to abaca for strength, and to bast fibers only when you will spend the preparation time.
Skill-isolating exercises are in projects that teach one skill, and where the craft is taught is covered in where hand papermaking is taught.
