Hand Papermaking
How to make hand made paper

To make paper by hand, you have to consider the following processes...

• Cooking. Raw plant materials are cooked in a caustic solution. This breaks down the material, separating and softening the cellulose fibre. There is an obvious health and safety issue here. You can avoid this step entirely, by buying prepared pulp or using recycled paper as your raw material. In the following steps I am referring to the use of recycled paper.
• Tearing. If you choose good quality waste papers as your raw material, there is no need to cook the material at all. Simply tear it into pieces approximately 40mm wide and soak the torn paper in warm water for a few minutes. For small quantities, do the tearing by hand. For large quantities you will need to make a tearing machine.
• Beating. Torn and soaked waste paper must now be beaten to separate the fibres. For this process you will need a beater. To make small quantities of pulp, use a food processor with plenty of warm water. Add a few drops of oil of wintergreen (methyl salicylate) or oil of cloves to the water. This kills moulds yet is not toxic on your skin. Beat only until there are no pieces of paper visible. For beating larger quantities of pulp, you will need to make a beater.
• Casting. You need a vat, which for small scale work can be a rectangular plastic bin approximately as deep as it is wide, and twice as long. You need "felts" which are rectangles of fabric about 15mm larger all round than your sheets of paper. The fabric is traditionally woven wool, but all kinds of fabric can be used to impart texture to the paper. You will also need a mould and deckle. You can buy one, but for small sheets of paper up to A4 size, you can easily make a mould and deckle.
• Pressing. In order to get crisp sheets of paper, you must have a decent flat-bed paper press, to exert great pressure on the cast and couched sheets of paper from your vat. You can buy a hydraulic press, or for small sheets up to A4 size, you can make a paper press.
• Drying and finishing. Once pressed, sheets can be hung and air dried. There is no need for forced drying, although an electric exhaust fan can assist air circulation. The easiest way to dry sheets is still attached to their felts, one sheet on each side of a felt. Just peg the felt to a clothes line. When dry, sheets of paper can be pressed again, but this time between sheets of metal rather than felts. The metal sheets can be galvanized iron, aluminium, or preferably stainless steel. Store sheets in stacks between boards with a weight on top.

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