Paper making

Just a Guy Holding a Crane

| wonko

I was cleaning some cooked Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) bark, scraping the outer layers that was outer bark and the remnants of the dried up fleshy parts of the plant, and a thought occurred to me. The residue was really fibrous – what would paper even look like made from this waste?

Given I had the time, equipment and curiosity to fuck around and find out, I hand-beat the residue, rinsed the pulpy mess until it was clean, and then divided the ball into 3, figuring (via guestimation) that 1/3 of the blob was enough to make an A3 sheet.

I took 1/3, added it to a bucket of water and agitated it vigorously to breakup and disperse the fiber uniformly through the water. Then, using a rectangular chinese food container, I gently ladled the really watery pulp onto my new A3 Mold and Deckle, in the lid of my new vat. Taking the time to distribute the fibre evenly and thinly. When all the fiber was gone, I couched the resultant sheet onto glass, then added some smooth poly-cotton sheeting material as a layer to isolate the sheet, then added a flanellette layer, another poly-cotton sheet material layer and then repeated the sheet formation process another 2 times.

Topped off the “post” with another layer of flannelette, and a top sheet of glass. Putting this sandwich on an angle to encourage the drips onto the floor drain, I then added a besser block to add firm squishing pressure, and left it to drip overnight. I must engineer a paper press that is more consistent.

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WM02 – An Art Piece?

| wonko

Those following my socials will have seen that i was quite excited with an idea and it’s execution – a rare 1-2 whammy with me:

Having made Mulberry Washi, I was trying to decide what i wanted to do with it. I think the larger sheets are currently sheet pulp storage I will re-beat and incorporate into other sheets, but sheets 1 and 2 (names WM01 and WM02 – my nomenclature) I wanted to keep…because.

WM01 is barely there mulberry tissue – I will not fold it, but it is fascinatingly strong. WM02 on the other hand is almost a sheet of paper – thin, lovely deckle edges and loads of character.

I had this idea, based in part on my extensive folding from one of the oldest origami books there is – Senbaruzu Orikata. The idea of a traditional Tsuru (crane – the one everyone including me learns first) still connected by a wing-tip to the surrounding paper began to eat away at me (originally the idea woke me up).

Folding connected cranes is all about the prep, so as not to put too much strain on the part that joins – a single point of failure. Exploring the sheet, I searched my origami squares collection and found that an 11.7cm square could be placed, avoiding the holes and weirder bits, so decided on that size arbitrarily. I also liked how much of the sheet would be untouched, and reasoned I would need it to attach to a backboard if it were to be framed… but I am getting ahead of myself – I had no idea if I could fold or work the sheet at all.

In pencil, I traced the square as accurately as I could, then carefully with a scalpel liberated all 4 edges nearly to each corner so I could see the square border, then gingerly began laying in the pre-creases of a “bird base”. To my absolute delight the paper took sharp creases with NO fatigue. Knowing how the bird base was going to collapse it allowed me to place the necessary pre-creases ONCE, and in the right orientation (mountain or valley).

Once the pre-creasing was done, I then went and liberated 3 of the 4 corners (no turning back now) and collapsed and shaped the Tsuru with no real drama – just being careful of the single remaining attached corner.

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White Mulberry Sheet Formation TLDR

| wonko

…so, having liberated 110g (dry weight) of bast fiber from a lovely bunch of Andy’s mulberry tree prunings, it was time to do something with it. I decided to use half (55g), and added it to a plastic container and added a little water to re-hydrate it.

Using the patented “AndyMallet™”, and a recently purchased Ikea bamboo chopping board wrapped in an old pillowcase, I began whacking the re-hydrated pulp using the hardwood edge of the mallet. The shaping of the mallet is perfect, so much mechanical advantage that the fiber was squished in no time.

After about 15 mins of beating, I did a “suspension test”, decided another 5mins was needed and whacked on for another 5ish minutes. BEATING fiber frays the cellulose tubes, allowing complex interlinking of adjacent fibers.

With a tub of “fluffy” beaten fiber, kept in suspension with Okra slime, it was time to try forming some sheets.

My setup was very basic, and after experimenting with the only “vat” like container I had, I abandoned the conventional “pulling” of sheets in favour of the “pour over” method as a means of testing the pulp properties.

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Extracting Mulberry Fiber

| wonko

So I had this slightly crazy idea, based on the fact that my son in law (Andy) wanted to prune his small Mulberry tree after it had finished fruiting (apparently the possums are grateful for this years crop).

Figuring the fruiting mulberry (Morus alba or less commonly Morus rubra) is in the same family as the Paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera = Kozo) I thought it would be fun to try and make paper from it. Kozo is known for glorious bast fibers (the inner bark) that is really suited to making fine strong paper. I can hear the experts screaming “don’t go there, it is the wrong plant”, but … meh, time to fuck around and find out.

As a test, I got a single branch, fresh off the tree, took it home and chopped it up into 30cm ish pieces (so they FIT in my pot) and soaked them overnight in water. Next day, using a small sharp knife, I nimbly removed the quills of bark off the sticks, noting how difficult this was, but not damaging myself. (this was not working smart … but I was exploring processes that could be scaled up). I cooked the quills in an old pot on the BBQ with waaaaay too much washing soda (I learned from this) until it was limp and soft, then rinsed, washed, separated the detritus from the inner silky but strong fibers and air-dried the tiny bundle.

I learned a LOT from the proto-twig.

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