Overview

• Preliminaries.
  • Admin.
  • Questions.

Preliminaries

Admin

• Today's note takers: LY and DP.
• I'm still not sure on readings for Friday. Spend time on your smooth drafts.

Upcoming EC

• Town hall today at noon or 7:30 p.m.
• CS Table Friday - Heartbleed. Contact [rebelsky] for details.
• Iowater Saturday. Contact [Iowater] for details.
• Pride Week Activity
• Hannah Fiske opening Thursday

Questions

Key Points from DP

1. Paper revolutionized how information was distributed in the world and was much cheaper and more efficient to make than its predecessor, parchment, which was made from animal skin.

2. The polymer that makes up paper is cellulose, and these polymers hydrogen bond with each other to make paper a cohesive surface. When paper is wet, water molecules sit between cellulose polymers and prevent them from bonding with each other. As water is squeezed out, the cellulose is forced to hydrogen bond with itself.

3. Handmade paper is very labor intensive but appeals to artists because of the process and the quality of the paper.

4. Sizing is a technique that prevents paper from “bleeding” when ink is applied to it. One way to size paper is to soak it in a gelatinous solution.

5. The raw material for hand paper making is usually cotton or hemp, but in the past paper has been made from rags. The phrase “from rags to riches” comes from this concept, because rags could be used to make paper which was a valuable commodity in the past.

Papermaking

• Invention of paper is really important.
• Before paper, people wrote on
  • Parchment - Animal skin (hard to make and smelly)
    • If you think of a book as 110 squirrel skins, that's a lot of work.
    • Kills, skin, stretch, tan, remove fur, etc.
• Paper invented/discovered at about the same time as printing (presumably not movable type paper)
• Story from Running's undergraduate days about visiting a paper company: Large pieces of iron suspended by paper

Tim Barrett - Hand Papermaking in Iowa (Chancery Papermaking)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-PmfdV_cZU

• Vatman forms the sheets.
• Coucher inverts model and tips onto the felt
• Layer removes sheets from the felt
• The team can produce about 1500 sheets in a day, or about
• Film: Hayle Mill 1976 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3PfwOItto
• The UIowa Team is attempting to reproduce the speed
  • Chancery size 12.5 x 18 (I think)
• The sheet size is cheaper and easier to work with than larger sheets
• Raw material: Rags: Linnen, hemp, and cotton fiber.
• UIowa
• Because of artificial fibres, they start with raw fibres, cut into 2.5 (?) mm length.
• Crush and beat the the fibre
• Add pulp for fifty sheets at a time.
• Vatman needs to take out just the right amount of pulp to give uniform sheets
• Coucher puts on felt in one continuous motion and returns form to vat. (Just two screens needed.)
• Layer works with
• 10 pounds of pulp in about three hours
• They can make about 200 sheets an hour
• Fifty accumulated sheets (a post?) go into a press, which applies multiple tons of pressures.
• More squeezing at the end of the day to expell water.
• Separate into spurs of four sheets
• Then hang to dry in an area that slows the drying rate.
• After a day of driving, the paper crumples; perhaps traditionally the damp new paper softens it.
  • Expermint suggests that works
• Another screw press to flatten more.
• Need to size in a warm gelatin solution. (3% solution.)
  • About twelve sheets at a time
  • Sizing tightens the surface of the paper so that the ink does not bleed (as much) into the paper.
  • Gelatin traditionally made of horse hooves and such.
  • Gelatin is a byproduct of the parchment industry.
• More pressing to remove excess gelatin
• Separate and hang to dry again.
• Burnish (e.g., with a polished agate stone), leaves sheets with a smoother surface.
• Grade sheets for thickness and quality.
• They are still working on improving the process.
• Their respect for earlier artisans has deepened.
• Getting closer to a utilitarian commodity

Chemistry of Papermaking - Trimmer

• Note that we're adding water and removing water.
• Some chemistry background is useful.
• Paper is a natural polymer:
  • Poly: Many
  • Mer: Units
• Lots of polymers, including proteins
• Monomer: Basic units that are repeated multiple times
• Simplest version: Repeat the same monomer
  • But can also repeat different monomers
• Create macromolecules that have high molecular weight.
• Paper is made from cellulose, which is a glucose (sugar) polymer
• [Sam will not try to put the structure into the notes.]
• Observe: Lots of oxygen in the structure. A hallmark of sugars and carbohydrates.
• The same glucose repeated again and again in the same orientation.
• Cellulose is a structural component of plants and trees.
• Why do they interact with each other in such a way that they form fibres?

• Hydrogen bonding holds fibres together

  • Similar to what holds water together
  • Hydrogen bonding is among the strongest bonding: Hydrogen atom bonded to an electronegative O, N, or F atom.

  • Paired with an electronegative elemeent (On, N, or F) containing a pair of electronis in another molecule or part of the same molecule.

           H
    

    .. / H-O: ---- H-O | bond H

• When the paper is wet, there's lots of water between the cellulose bonds. As the water is expelled, the bonds form between the fibres.

• "Rags to riches" - remember that dollar bills are made from rags via papermaking process (or at least used to be)
• Sources
  • Rags (linen and cotton), which are almost pure cellulose
  • Asian: Mulberry bark, hemp, flax
  • More recent: Pine, birch, etc.
    • Requires chemical pulping
    • Need to remove lignin (with sulfuric acid)
    • Cellulose must be bleached
  • It's all cellulose

Running returns

• Running learned to make paper from linters (leftovers from garment industry)
  • Easier than rags
• Rags used to be fermented and beaten into pulp.
• Paper seems to come from China

Japanese Papermaking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cbYiAvI9cQ

• Many layers are built on surface of mold
• Surface of mold is removed. Sheets are laid on top of each other.
• A string is put on top to help separate sheets.
• Placed on metal surface and brushed out.
• Sheets taken outside and dried in the sun.
• Rice paper has a different feel than traditional notebook paper
  • Note that it's not made of rice; it was used to package rice.
• The person at UIowa that Running worked with wrote a classic book on Japanese papermaking (with only an undergraduate degree from K'zoo)
• He's now won a Macarthur genius award.
• Part of the great success of the UIowa center for the book.

Dieu Donne Papermill

Artist E.V. Day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMVzsJX0EbI

• Painting on fibres in a frame
• Then huge mold of cotton fibre
• Then frame into sheet
• Then lots of foam
• Then a press.
• Image has transferred onto the sheet itself.

Questions

• How does hand-made paper differ from commercial paper?
  • It's not commercially viable at a large scale
  • Some of the materials couldn't be done at that scale.
  • It's an aestheetic choice
  • The different feel of something that's handmade.