Paper
Make a cheap, plentiful writing surface.
Everything for this step
- Field guide
- None yet. A guide goes deeper than a step: technique, identification and the hazards.
- Builds
- None yet.
- Reference sheets
- None.
- Sciences it rests on
- Chemistry
- Track
- Records and writing, level 3 of 4 · next: Printing
Why this matters
Parchment costs a herd; paper costs rags. That price collapse is what makes literacy, record-keeping, accounting, drawing and eventually printing affordable. Paper is the substrate on which cumulative knowledge actually runs.
The shape of it
- Collect rags — linen, hemp and cotton. Rag paper is far stronger and more durable than wood paper, and the raw material is your own worn-out textiles.
- Ret and beat. Soak the rags, then beat them to pulp — by hand stampers or, far better, a water-powered stamping mill or Hollander beater. Beating is the step that determines paper strength.
- Bleach gently with lime and sun if you want white paper. Aggressive chemical bleaching weakens the fibre and makes paper that crumbles in decades.
- Form the sheet: dip a wire-mesh mould into the vat, lift, drain, and shake to interlock the fibres. This shake is the whole craft.
- Couch, press and dry. Transfer each sheet to a felt, stack, press hard to drive out water, then hang to dry.
- Size the sheet with gelatine or starch so ink does not feather. Unsized paper is blotting paper.
- Wood pulp comes later and needs chemical pulping to remove lignin. Note that unpurified wood paper yellows and disintegrates within a century — if you are making the archive copy, make it from rag.
- Then build the printing press. Paper without printing is a modest improvement; paper with printing is a change of civilizational state.
Doing it, step by step
The summary above says what has to happen. This says how, with the numbers that decide whether it works.
1 · Collect and sort rags by fibre
Linen, hemp and cotton make paper; wool, silk and synthetics do not — sort them out. Remove buttons, seams, hems and stitching. Rag paper is far stronger and more durable than wood-pulp paper, and the raw material is your own worn-out textiles.
Organise collection: a place where worn cloth is left, and a rule that no linen or cotton is burnt. Cut the rags into small pieces — a few centimetres square — before soaking.
2 · Soak, then beat — beating decides the strength
Soak the cut rags for days to soften them; historically rags were left damp to ferment gently for a week or more. Then beat them to pulp — by hand stampers, or far better a water-powered stamping mill or a Hollander beater — see water power.
Beating is the step that determines paper strength: it frays each fibre so it bonds to its neighbours. Test: drop a pinch of pulp into a clear glass of water and stir. Ready when it disperses into fine, separate fibres with no knots or clumps. Record how long each batch was beaten.
3 · Bleach gently, if at all
For white paper, wash with weak lime water and lay the pulp or rags out in sun, rinsing repeatedly. Aggressive chemical bleaching weakens the fibre and makes paper that crumbles in decades.
Unbleached rag paper is off-white and lasts centuries. For archive copies, skip bleaching.
4 · Form the sheet with a mould, deckle and a shake
Dilute the pulp in a vat to a thin soup — around 1% fibre. The mould is a wooden frame with a fine wire or bamboo mesh; the deckle is a loose frame on top that sets the sheet's edges.
Dip the mould vertically, turn it flat under the surface, lift it level, and as the water drains, shake it firmly side to side and front to back so the fibres interlock in every direction. That shake is the whole craft. Sheet thickness comes from pulp concentration and how much you scoop.
5 · Couch, press and dry
Couch: roll the wet sheet off the mould onto a damp felt, lay another felt on top, and build a stack — a post — of alternating sheets and felts.
Press the post hard in a screw press — see woodworking — to drive out as much water as possible; this also consolidates the sheet. Then separate the sheets and hang them in a loft with gentle airflow, out of direct sun, to dry slowly. Fast drying cockles the sheet.
6 · Size it, so ink does not feather
Unsized paper is blotting paper. Dip dried sheets in warm gelatine size — a few percent of gelatine in water at about 30–40 °C — drain and dry again. Gelatine is boiled from hide scraps and bones.
Avoid alum in the size for anything meant to last. Alum-sized and alum-rosin-sized paper turns acidic and destroys itself over decades to a century — a large share of nineteenth-century books are crumbling for this reason. Adding a little chalk (calcium carbonate) to the pulp gives an alkaline reserve that protects the sheet.
7 · Make the archive from rag, not wood
Wood pulp needs chemical pulping to remove lignin, and unpurified groundwood paper yellows and disintegrates within a century. It is fine for the throwaway — notices, wrapping — and wrong for anything the settlement needs to keep.
Keep two grades: rag, unbleached, gelatine-sized, with chalk for the archive, laws, records and books; anything cheaper for everything else. Label the archive stock.
8 · Test the paper by folding it
The best simple test of paper durability: fold a strip back and forth along the same line until it breaks and count the folds. Good rag paper survives many; weak or acidic paper breaks quickly. Test every batch and keep the counts.
Then build the printing press. Paper without printing is a modest improvement; paper with printing changes what a society can remember.