 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Phorium Tenax Paper, handcrafted at Quay School of Arts in Whanganui, NZ. |
|
|
|
Phorium Tenax (aka NZ Flax) produces a tough fibre. At QSA we produce many varieties of paper based on the local flaxes. Some are produced with just pure fibre, some with elements of the plant 'skin' present. This is achieved with changes in the processing timetable.
Pure muka fibre is the result of a long boil up left to steep for a further 4-7 days, then rinsed and beaten (medium/long) in a Hollander beater. Para, results from a short boil up, no steeping and given a short beat in the Hollander. As you can imagine there are varieties based an all the other permutations in between.
Currently all the papers made here are 'waterleaf', that is they are unsized. Sizing acts as a binder, allowing paper to resist dissolving back into its component fibres.
Marty Vreede is the senior Printmaking Tutor at QSA, running the print studio, teaching classes at all levels, producing his own artworks, and continuing an ancient tradition of papermaking. Marty runs classes on papermaking both at/for QSA and offsite when there is sufficient interest.
I can tell you now that it is a VERY wet process, but there is nothing like holding a sheet of paper you made yourself. Both Marty and myself do sell some of our products, please contact us with any enquiries. Our handmade sheets are produced in 720x1000mm, 350x520mm, and A3, all with 4 true deckle edges. |
|
|
|
This is a document under construction, pictures and further information to come |
|
|
I am a Batchelor of Fine Arts student, in my third year (2007) of study Printmaking, specialising in papermaking.
Cheers
Andrew Reilly |
|
|
|
|
Mobile: 027 338 3328
E-mail: [email protected]
|
|
|
|
Assorted notes. |
|
|
|
Flax terms |
|
|
|
Flax that includes the fibre and skin, beaten to smaller fragments. |
|
|
Shive |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Muka |
|
The fibre of flax, sans skin and herbaceous matter. |
|
|
|
|
|
Papa |
|
When the Flax is dried/ aged it is called papa, for Papa 'the earth', it is in the process of returning to the earth. The tannins are more concentrated in this than fresh flax. |
|
|
|
|
|
Para |
|
|
|
Flax that includes the fibre and skin, results from a short boil up, no steeping and given a short beat in the Hollander, resulting in a very course paper. |
|
|
|
|
|
Paper making terms |
|
|
|
Paper is formed on a wire mesh; the paper side facing the mesh is called the wire side and though hard to notice once fillers and calendaring have evened it out, the wire side is ALWAYS smoother. |
|
|
Wire side. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Twinwire |
|
is the result of two sheets which have been cooched together so that each sheets's wire side faces outward. |
|
|
|
|
|
The process of transferring the paper from mould to felt, felt to glass etc. Cooching paper to glass results in an even smoother surface. |
|
|
Cooching |
|
|
|
|
|
|
First we give the post a brief pressing, in our wet press, to reduce the water content, then place the paper sheet to a glass face (we found applying ?dry? silicone spray and allowing it to set on the glass helps later) use a roller on the cooching felt to release the sheet to the glass, the felt should come free quite easily. Leave it to dry COMPLETELY. Use a razor blade as necessary to lift the edge, and then peel it carefully and evenly off the glass.
The sooner the sheets are couched onto glass the smoother the faced surface will be, the less the weedmat surface pattern. The first glass experiment was couched to glass a day and a half to 2 days after making (Twinwire, made Monday couched to glass Wednesday late morning). The 2nd batch (1/s flax & recycled paper made Wednesday night and couched onto glass Thursday early afternoon).
The improvement in the surface of the 2nd batch is quite noticeable. I am interested in testing the potential of couching to glass as soon as the sheet is formed on the weedmat, reducing the effect of the weedmat.
I had been concerned that the sheets will not have had the overnight in the wet press. Later trials indicate that just squeezing out the bulk of the water from the post in the wet press is sufficient. Even then, the weedmat leaves some marking; however, using vilene may solve that. |
|
|
|
Post - a term used in printing and papermaking for a stack of sheets. |
|
|
|
Half stuff - a term used in papermaking, describing the hydrated paper fibre, pre-mixed ready to be added to the vat in measured volumes. |
|
|
|
Stuff - a papermaking term, describing the contents of the papermaking vat when it has the correct mix of fibre to water. |
|
|
|
Seeding - a term used to describe the addition of half stuff to a clean vat, to establish the necessary volume of fibre to water which will produce a sheet of the correct weight. |
|
|
|
Re-seeding - Replacing the volume of fibre removed after a sheet of paper is pulled from the vat. |
|
|
|
Vat - A large tub where the paper is made, it should be large enough that there is room for the mould and deckle and for the wave generated by pulling a sheet not to hit the side and bounce back onto the new paper. The papermaker is called a Vatman. |
|
|
|
Archival paper - This is a paper produced acid-free and lignin free. |
|
|
|
Acid-free paper - This is paper made with fibre between 6ph and 8ph |
|
|
|
Breaker-Beater - This is similar to a Hollander beater in design and concept, the major difference is in the beater blades, a beater-breaker has more finer blades which do not have sharp corners, or it would cut the rag/fibre instead of tearing and fibrillating the fibre |
|
|
|
Fibre Processing terms |
|
|
|
Harvesting (image to come) |
|
|
|
It is well worth the effort to harvest flax properly; it cleans up the plant and encourages faster healthier growth. Even plants used by weavers can benefit, and the improvements produce leaves which are softer and easier to weave. |
|
|
|
Practically speaking we can use old, damaged, frayed or spotted leaves that weavers would not use. In doing so the plant is left tidy and healthier. We also look at the growing arrangement of the plant removing any 'fans' growing inappropriately, removing ?fans? which have produced their flowering stem as they die off after that, the result is a tidy and healthy plant(s). |
|
|
|
Flax stripping ? this operation involves the removal of the herbaceous matter (90+%), leaving primarily the muka fibre. I will likely reduce the volume of caustic required for a boil-up, but as the skin and green has been reduced we may be able to process 2-3 times the volume of fibre in a boil-up, so we might need more caustic overall. Of course non-muka boil-ups will not be affected. |
|
|
|
The flax leaves, we think primarily in the skin and herbaceous matter, contain a considerable volume of wax, and we have wondered at the possibility of isolating this and possibly converting it into another useable product (Candles, soap, skin cream?). |
|
|
|
Chaff cutting - Cutting the flax, about 25mm long. (image to come) |
|
|
|
Retting - This could be leaving the flax out in the weather to breakdown.
It could be assisted by chemical aid; we plan to trial retting at the post chaff cutting phase and to push the process by using the alkaline water drained from a previous boil up. We hope this will speed up the retting process additionally reducing the caustic nature of the recovered water from the boil up.
We do want to minimise our operations impact on the environment, even though it is quite small, all of us want to keep our footprint to a minimum. Many ret before cutting the fibre, but I suspect that NZ Flax will benefit from retting after cutting, providing more access for the weather/chemicals to the fibre. |
|
|
|
Boil up- Flax fibre is not the only tough part of this plant! |
|
|
|
To get to the fibre we need to break the fibre free of the herbaceous matter and break down the lignin binding the fibres into the leaf structure, in order to do this we prepare an alkaline bath (caustic soda), and boil the fibre for about 2-4 days. |
|
|
|
Steeping - After boiling, the fibre might be left to steep up to 7 days. We would like to recover the boil up water for the retting process trials. |
|
|
|
In our current process, which does not include flax stripping, if the boil up is leached immediately some of the skin will remain present. If it is left to steep in the alkaline bath for a week the skin will be dispersed and only fibre will be left. |
|
|
|
If the beat is very short on an unsteeped brew, the skin fragments can remain quite large, if the beat is long the skin fragments will give a pepper?n?salt pattern. |
|
|
|
Flush - After boiling/steeping the water is drained off (recovered), the vessel is then refilled with water to begin leaching the alkaline chemicals from the fibre, we leave it to steep for an hour or two, then dump the water, and refill again. This process is repeated several times (the more we do this the less rinsing we have to do). |
|
|
|
Rinsing - Then the flushed fibre is offloaded into a coarse screen/filter and washed using high pressure water until no suds or colour are produced. |
|
|
|
Bleaching??? |
|
|
| I have used Oxymagic to get a soft bleach effect, it produced quite a nice colour compared to the harsh straw colour Janola can produce if not oxygenated sufficiently. |
|
|
| Currently we use Janola in production, given regular agitation to oxygenate, to yield a good white; it has the highest % of active ingredient of readily available bleaches. |
|
|
| The bleaching process takes at least 1 day up to two. Leaving the fibre bleaching unattended for too long, does not deliver a whiter product, the fibre seems more brittle. As a rule we try to bleach in 1 day, with several water stirs/agitations to maintain oxygen in the batch. |
|
|
| ? |
|
|
| We began using 2.5 lt per 5kg of fibre in a 50 litre tub but only filled between a third to a half of water and stirring regularly. I found we could maximize our results by starting 6kg with 2.5lt in half filled tub, agitating the bleach/fibre using high pressure water to stir the fibre and mix in more oxygen, then after 2-3 agitations the tub is usually full, we split the mix into 2 tubs and continue the agitation. |
|
|
| Colour varies between Bleaching batches, for a cleaner result mix your batches into one, rebeat in the Hollander to mix and re-hydrate, then rebleach lightly to equalize the entire batch, (1 litre of Janola per 6-10 kg of fibre). |
|
|
| Recently, I have trialled a cheaper alternative, Homebrand in 2lt containers, and the result of that on 6kg of fibre with high pressure water agitation/stirring is as good as the Janola using the older method of paddle stirring. |
|
|
| For my Bright white I use 2 lt on 7-8kg of fibre for the 1st stage, then after rinsing and another beat, 1lt on 7-8kg for the 2nd stage. |
|
|
| Bedding the beater - the first beat in any beater should be a bedding beat, to ensure the beater blades are synchronised with the bedplate. This like a normal beat, some fibre and lots of water, than adding some grinding compound, like #100 grit used to grind litho stones. This fibre will be unusable for paper but it seats the beater properly. This should also be done after maintenance if the beater roll was moved at all, make sure the roll is returned to its original position or as close to it before performing the bedding. Give the beater a good wash out immediately. |
|
|
| Beating, Luckily we have the advantage of a Hollander beater at QSA, and a robust one at that. Flax fibre is really tough and we need the beater for that! |
|
|
| The fibre is transferred to the Hollander, water added and then beaten, adjusting the beat finer and finer as the beat progresses. If excessive foaming occurs there are still chemicals present, dump the water, and replace it in the Hollander. |
|
|
| Anyway, current production uses a shorter beat than I myself prefer, this has some impact on the binding ability of the fibre within the sheet of paper. |
|
|
| I also believe that the beat also has an effect on the whiteness of the fibre, the more masticated the fibre is the whiter the bleach result. |
|
|
| I noticed while working with the different fibre treatments that some fibre tended to feel soft and others harsh almost straw like. Reviewing the processes, I feel that over bleaching can be the primary cause. Research indicates that this might be the difference between ?Free? fibre and ?Wet? fibre. A Free fibre meant that it is free draining: quicker drying. Whereas Wet fibre contains and retains its water, making it slow drying. |
|
|
| Of course, short beat stock tends to be free and feels more straw like, while long beat stock tends to be wet and feel softer. |
|
|
| My experiments seem to show that to achieve a brighter white, 2 bleaching stages are required (much like hair bleaching the 1st stage often leaves a strong straw colour which the 2nd bleach removes to leave a platinum blonde colour). Between bleaching stages I beat the fibre again, further experiments suggested that the more fibrillated the fibre, the brighter the result. |
|
|
| My last batch of fibre this year is the culmination of many of these findings. |
|
|
| 1) Well beaten (about 1 hour, almost on the stops), |
|
|
| 2) Bleached, (2lt Bleach per 8kg Fibre, stirred/agitated by high pressure water) |
|
|
| 3) Rinsed |
|
|
| 4) Beaten again (up to 30 mins, almost on the stops) |
|
|
| 5) Bleached (1lt Bleach per 8kg fibre, stirred and agitated by high pressure water) |
|
|
| 6) Rinsed |
|
|
| 7) Balled. |
|
|
| There is a fine bright white fibre, and a courser cream coloured fibre in the result, but when pulling heavy weight stock the finer fibre crowds the mesh, the result is a lightly cockled flat sheet, with a fine, bright white wire side, and a mat of course fibre on the non-wire side. |
|
|
| Pulling sheets |
|
|
| Consistency and evenness are the usual trademarks of well made paper. |
|
|
| Stir the stuff in the vat, fit the deckle over the mould then whet the screen, slip the screen into the vat. Holding the mould and deckle down at the bottom, agitate the vat again, then draw the mould and deckle up through the vat, in a well paced lift, pausing momentarily at the surface to release the surface tension holding the mould. Lift it free, allow it to drain a little, remove the deckle, then (if the paper is to dry on screen) place it aside to drain further.? If you are cooching to a post, make sure the post felt is wet, then in an even way place one end of the mould in contact with the felt and ?roll? the mould across the felt and the sheet should release onto the felt, place the next felt over the sheet and wet it, pull the next sheet. |
|
|
| On screen - In an effort to speed the production process we often use a wet vacuum to remove the bulk of the excess water, I recommend against this if producing tissue weight paper. The moulds are then stacked in racks and left overnight in a slightly warm airflow to dry out completely. |
|
|
| In post ? once enough paper has been made, place the post into a wet press, slowly and evenly squeeze out the excess water, leave under pressure overnight, remove and hang felts with paper attached on a line to dry. The post system works well for higher volume production. |
|
|
| Sorting and picking |
|
|
| Invariably there will be impurities in the paper, less bleached fibre, vegetable matter, grit, and in Wanganui we suffer from calcium/lime deposits in the water, so each sheet should be checked and contaminants picked out carefully. Often the sheet will be undamaged, sometimes a mark or hole may result, and this should then be graded as a second or repulped. |
|
|
|
Sizing |
|
|
| We have not produced any internally sized paper. |
|
|
| Our sizing trials initially revolved around using gelatine powder. |
|
|
| (Using 30g per Litre of warm water as suggested in one book). |
|
|
| We use a metal paint roller tray and clean paint roller. A warmer plate keeps the gelatine from setting. With a mylar sheet as a work surface we use a new/clean paint roller to apply the size onto the sheets of paper, always work from the centre outwards or the paper will roll up into the roller. |
|
|
| There are difficulties doing this on larger sheets as the coverage is too variable and the sheet then buckles due to differences in drying. |
|
|
| Don?t try to glass cooch a sized sheet?! |
|
|
| I have sized a sheet while on the glass, but have had several sheets that were sized first, ended up well glued to the windows. |
|
|
| Wallpaper size seems to result in a softer size than gelatine but there is a significant improvement in the sheet, compared to an unsized sheet. |
|
|
| Tub sizing, we made a batch of stock, and a batch of wallpaper size, and followed the directions from 1 book. We put the 1st paper sheet into a size bath, and when it was completely covered and had submerged, we then put the next sheet in and repeated the process until a post of about 10 sheets were in the ?tub?, then we removed and squeezed out the excess size in a wet press. Now this might be the problem, our wet press is multiple boards and g-clamps used successfully to remove water, (maybe the size wet press is meant to be more mangle like). Anyway, we lost about 7 sheets of 10 not a particularly pleasing result. So we have more work required. |
|
|
| Recent research has shown how they size paper in a commercial papermaking plant as part of the process on the [paper] web. We are all used to seeing mangles where the rollers sit vertically and the product is passed from 1 side to the other, when sizing paper, the mangle is set horizontally and the product descends through a bath of size which is held between the 2 rollers so the paper enters the bath, is sized, then squeezed, and then can be taken away and hung out. |
|
|
| If it is too wet the sheet will be distorted if hung on a line, and the line might droop. |
|
|
| In many handmade paper plants the sized sheets are usually placed onto a jute screen hung between 2 horizontal poles, usually 6-12 sheets fit onto the gently drooping screen. |
|
|
|
Calendaring |
|
|
| Generally, we put all our papers through a final pressing to calendar them. This compresses the fibres, and smoothes the paper surface. On our calendar press, the top roller is smoother than the bedplate so I always calendar my sheets wire side up for the best possible result. |
|
|
| However I found that uncalendared paper gave the best results for a blind embossed project, as the sheet had a greater compression range. |
|
|
| I am looking forward to continuing involvement in this process and developing the fibre and sizing to production stages. |
|
|
|
Bibliography |
|
|
| BMA, Papermaking |
|
|
| John Angus, Papermaking Pioneers, 1976, Whitcoulls Ltd. |
|
|
| Irwin A. Pearl, The chemistry of Lignin, 1967, Edward Arnold td, London |
|
|
| Jacqueline I. Kroschwitz, Polymers ? Fibres and Textiles a compendium |
|
|
| Massey Ref R677.4Pol |
|
|
| Simon Barcham Green, Papermaking Moulds, Hand papermaking, 1994 |
|
|
| Tim Moore, Constructing Western Moulds |
|
|
|
?Brigadoon? papermaking and print Series.?????? (image to come) |
|
|
|
While all papermakers tend to strive for consistency even in a handmade paper, I noticed that the wash n wave action in the vat could create some sumptuous patterns. Usually these are faulty and more often than not are washed off and re-pulled.
In considering how to display my primary print series for 2007 I realised that hanging the pieces on the wall in the traditional way would interfere with the overall result I was working toward. Further the white cube of our chosen gallery was less than perfect.
I realised that I wanted to show my kiwilith series in the centre of the room in a outward facing circle, making the connection to the megalithic stone rings much stronger. In deciding that I realised that the white cube/walls would be an interference.
After some thought I recalled Rob Taylor saying how he had been influenced by his night stay at Stonehenge, how encountering the megaliths in the morning mists had enhanced the ethereal feel. It occurred to me that that was the moment I wanted to capture, so the concept of the Brigadoon series was born.
Starting with the antithesis of usual paper making we pulled tissue weight paper in as many inconsistent and different ways, trying to capture the veils of mist in the paper matrix, droplet watermarks speak of moisture, the re-pulls seem to lock cloud forms into the matrix.
We used the water vacuum on one batch, and found proof that this can draw the fibre deep into the wire mesh making it quite hard to remove.
Tipping experiments suggested that we use long narrow drops in volume to re-create the misty moment of mystical encounter
|
|