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This information is reprinted from the For Beginners column
of Hand Papermaking Newsletter #33 (January, 1996).
To learn how to order Hand Papermaking bi-annual magazine
and quarterly newsletter, click
here.
Methods of Beating Fiber
All material for papermaking--whether cloth, plant fiber,
or paper to be recycled--needs to treated to separate the
fibers. Beating is the most common and quickest way to do
so. (Other forms of fiber separation, like retting and fermentation,
are sometimes used in place of or as a supplement to beating.
Cooking material, especially raw fiber, before beating also
helps accelerate the process of separation.)
The earliest papermakers probably beat their material by
hand with a stick (as is still done in some traditional
forms of Japanese papermaking), by the use of simple mortar
and pestle equipment, or by the use of animal-power (used
to pull a stone wheel continuously through a circular stone
trough, for example).
More advanced technology for beating material for papermaking
came with the introduction of stampers, which range from
foot-powered adaptations of the mortar and pestle design
to enormous mechanical devices, with stamper heads of different
degrees of coarseness in adjacent troughs for processing
the material in stages. In the European mills of the middle
ages and Renaissance, papermakers constructed large, elaborate,
water-powered stamping mills to process a considerable amount
of cloth into pulp for papermaking, with ingenious features
like rinse water running through the troughs where the fiber
was being beaten, to remove waste materials throughout the
process.
In the late 17th century, the Dutch invented a mechanical
device known as the Hollander beater. These are still used
by hand papermakers today, although the machine-made paper
industry has generally switched to more chemical ways of
breaking down material for papermaking. Hollander beaters
(or Hollanders, as they are commonly known) come in different
designs, but all consist of an oblong trough with rounded
ends in which water and the material being beaten circulate;
a rotating cylinder with dull metal blades (known as the
roll); and a bedplate of raised dull metal blades in the
bottom of the trough, underneath the roll. The roll turns
in close proximity to the bedplate and the material being
beaten is forced between the blades, through the circular
movement of the water. Either the bedplate or the roll are
adjustable and one of them is sometimes moveable; these
features allow for variations in the thickness and toughness
of the material being processed. Some Hollanders have a
device for removing waste water so that the fiber can be
more effectively rinsed as it is being beaten.
Contemporary hand papermakers also use a variety of tools
adapted to their needs in preparing partially-processed
fibers (like cotton linters and sheets of abaca). These
include devices like Whiz Mixers, Hydropulpers, blenders,
and home-made devices of similar ilk, which variously serve
to agitate the pulp or subject it to a garbage-disposal
type of treatment. None of these devices, however, produce
pulp as effectively or with the same force of Hollanders
or stampers, as they tend to cut or simply stir rather than
force apart the separate fibers. For beating certain materials,
especially cloth, stampers and Hollanders are the only practical
choice.
For further reading:
Beater Builders of North America, A Catalog of Handbuilt
Beaters, Lee S. McDonald, ed., (Friends of Dard Hunter
Paper Museum, c/o Dard Hunter III, PO Box 771, Chillicothe,
OH 45601: 1989).
A Hand Papermaker's Sourcebook, Sophie Dawson and
Silvie Turner, (Design Books, Lyons & Burford, 31 West 21
Street, New York, NY 10010: 1995).
Papermaking, The History and Technique of an Ancient
Craft, Dard Hunter, (Dover Publications, New York: 1974,
reprint). Copyright 1996 Hand Papermaking, Inc.
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