CHAPTER TWO
GETTING STARTED
Now that you have everything you need to hand, it’s time to start making paper. As with cooking, it is a good idea to make sure all your ingredients and equipment as described inChapter 1 are ready to go, so that you don’t have to go hunting for things when your hands are already wet and/or holding a fragile newly formed sheet. At the end of this chapter, you will find a troubleshooting section to help solve any problems you may encounter along the way.
At this point, I’m going to assume that you will be making paper straight after preparing your pulp. If you want to prepare pulp now to use later, just skip to the next section on pulp preparation and then return here to learn how to set up your workstation.
Setting Up Your Workstation
Choose a table or worktop to act as your papermaking surface. If you are concerned it might be damaged by water, protect it with a plastic sheet or waterproof tablecloth. One half of the space will hold your vat, the other your couching area. You can choose whether to work from left to right or vice versa. If you choose the vat-in-vat set-up, you should not need much other protection, but a towel placed under the outer vat will catch any stray drips.
The couching area will need more absorbent layers: a towel with old newspapers underneath will work fine and can be replaced as you go along if things get very soggy. Keep the edge of the towel tucked on top of the table to minimize dripping onto the floor.
On top of your newspapers and towel, place another towel, felt or blanket square. This will form the bottom layer of your fresh stack of paper and will be used to transport the wet sheets to the next stage of drying. You should have another towel/felt/blanket layer standing by to place on top of the finished stack.
The final layer consists of a kitchen cloth or thin fabric cloth on which your paper will rest. You will need several of these as you will interleave them between your fresh sheets. In most cases these can be reused for each stack, but if you plan on hanging your paper up to dry, you will need a larger supply as the cloths will be in use for the whole drying process. A bucket or tub of clean water should be placed on the table to wet your cloths ready for action and provide any other water you may need. A small container such as a yogurt pot is useful too, as we’ll see.
Now you are ready to prepare your pulp.
Preparing Your Pulp
- Dry fibre (new or recycled, or a mixture)
- Container of water for soaking
- Blender or paint mixer
- Jam jar
Whether you are using recycled paper or new semi-processed fibres, and whichever equipment you use to process it, the first few stages of preparation will be similar. Start out with around 100g of dry paper/fibre. While it’s not essential to weigh the fibre accurately when starting out, it’s a great habit to get into, as it becomes more important when you want to try more advanced techniques.