Paper Origins - Paper making process

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One ton of Indian handmade paper, produced from cotton rag waste, saves about 270 Eucalyptus or at least 400 bamboo trees that would be required to make the same quantity of machine made paper.

Unlike easily available machine made papers, Indian Handmade papers are made from ‘khadda’ i.e. unbleached hand spun rags left over from the garment industry. Except for the electric motors used for pulping, calendaring and peripheral activities, all production is manual. No harsh chemicals or dyes are used. Decorative effects are produced by inclusions such as petals, grass clippings and waste threads. Paper is dried under the sun. The water let out from the industries is benign. The input is cotton cut waste from garment industries. And the output goes to every advanced economy in the world.

Here is a brief description of how otherwise rags evolve into beautiful and unique papers.

SORTING:

The cotton rags are sorted by hand to remove plastics, synthetic materials, buttons and other non textile material to ensure quality pulp without any contamination. It is also given a vigorous shake to remove the dust and dirt.

CUTTING:

The collected rags are then cut into small pieces by electrical shredders or choppers. Some manufacturers still use traditional curved knives or sickles.

BEATING:

Clean and cut raw material is washed and beater in a ‘Hollander Beater’. Some light chemicals like rosin soap and alum are added to give papers blot free characteristic and consistency. During this process, desired material like grass, silk, straw etc and colors are also added to the pulp.

DIPPING and LIFTING:

For thin or fine papers, the pulp is diluted with water and then put into a masonry trough or vat. The lifting mold (mesh on a wooden frame) is then dipped into the trough, shaken evenly and lifted out with the pulp on it. This method is known as dipping. In lifting method, which is used for thicker or card papers, a fixed amount of pulp is poured evenly onto a mold, which is then compressed between wooden frames in a water tank and dipped. The mold is then raised, using a lever mechanism, to drain the excess water.

PRESSING:

Each newly formed wet paper sheet is transferred onto a fine muslin cloth known as felt which acts as an interleaf between paper sheets. Hydraulic press is used to squeeze out excess water from a stack of ‘felted’ wet paper sheets.

DRYING:

The sheets are separated and dried naturally in the shades. Solar driers are also used by some manufacturers to speed up this process and to reduce open space requirements. Felt clothes are peeled off from dry sheets.

SIZING:

After drying, the sheets go under quality checking and bad sheets are removed. Good sheets are given a coating with starch to improve the physical properties of the paper. It improves erasability and permanence and prevents the paper from blotting and feathering.

CALENDERING:

To smoothen the surface and to enhance the gloss, the sheets are placed between metal plates and passed through spring loaded, heavily pressured rollers in a calendering machines.

CUTTING:

Finally the sheets are cut to the required sizes and packaged.

Source http://www.tve.org

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