Making Paper
by Chris Tilley
This week my kids and I decided to make paper. This allowed me to show them how paper that we put in the recycling bin can become paper yet again. The quality of the paper does go down as the length of the fibers get shorter but thats not the point of the exercise.
First of all we need some used paper. Basically anything paper or cardboard will work torn up into small pieces. I used the paper out of our shredder. The down side to that is that when I actually made the paper I saw bits of plastic in it and realized that I shred windowed envelopes. I wonder if those windows make the envelopes a monstrous hybrid as defined in Cradle to Cradle.(Article)
Next I added water to cover the paper. Note I started with way to much paper for me and my kids. We then let it soak as I went to make the frames.
The frames where made from some scrap wood I had laying around. My cuts were not perfect, new toy that I need more practice on setting up. I stapled the sides together and then stapled the window screening on to the back. I should have gotten it tighter than I did. The paper ended up flowing between the wood and the screen making it difficult to get out of the mold.
By now the paper had been soaking for about an hour and I blended it using a hand blender. Messy!!! Next time I will use something with a lid.
It sprayed everywhere.
This is when I realized that I had to much paper so I took some out and added it to another bowl and added more water. I continued blending until I could no longer make out paper in it.
Now came the fun part actually making paper. We took our frames and submerged them in the bowl. Bigger fames would require a bigger container. I didn’t have anything of a suitably big size so I made smaller frames. The kids didn’t care. We gently shake them as we draw them out to level out the paper. We then but them on a towel to dry out. We put some extra screen over top and pressed out as much of the water as we could.
I then tried to remove them from the frame. This was more difficult than necessary as stated earlier. I had to use a knife to gently put the paper out from between the wood and the screen then we could carefully peel it off. We then sandwiched it between two screens and folded over the towel to get out as much water as possible. I was using a Sham-wow and that seem to make a difference.
We then put our creations on a cooling rack to dry thoroughly overnight and repeated the process.
It was a lot of fun. The kids learned about recycling and actually saw it in action. There are lots of websites out there that have other instructions on how to do make paper. You can add food coloring to change the color, put flowers in at the pressing and lots of other ideas. Have fun.
Interesting. Didn’t know making paper could be so simple.\
Thanks
Comment by Keith — Friday, April 3, 2009 @ 1:09 pm