In my current work, I am exploring the quality of shrinkage with overbeaten fibers. For this issue of the magazine devoted to fiber, I thought it would be interesting to compare two drying methods applied to sheets of paper made from the same flax pulp.
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Fiber: I used raw flax obtained from Twinrocker Handmade Paper in September 2006. Raw flax gathered from different sources (or from the same source at different times) can yield papers varying widely in color, texture, and other qualities. Pre-beating preparation: I soaked the fiber overnight in water. Beating: I gradually loaded one-and-a-half pounds of soaked fiber into my 2 lb. Davis Hodges Hollander beater filled with ten gallons of water. Loading took at least 30 minutes due to the long fibers, which tended to clump and wrap themselves around the beater bar. Once the beater was running freely, I gradually lowered the roll, using the sound of the beater as my guide. I beat the pulp for 9 ž hours until it was fairly homogenous, although some longer fiber strands remained in the pulp. (It is interesting to note that although I could feel these longer strands in the wet pulp and see them during sheet formation, they are not visible in the finished sheets.) Additives: None. Sheetforming: I formed Western-style sheets using a Tim Moore 12 x 18 inch laid mould. Pressing: The sheets were pressed between woolen felts in a hydraulic press. Drying: The restraint-dried samples were stacked in a drying system sandwiched between layers of triwall cardboard with two blotters on each side of the wet sheets. The air-dried samples were loosely placed onto sheets of pellon and loft dried. Notes: The restraint-dried sheets retained their 12 x 18 inch size after drying, but the air-dried sheets ended up approximately 9 ―x 13 ― inches, representing a shrinkage rate of around 40 percent, with more shrinkage occurring along the wider dimension of the sheet. The air-dried paper dried slightly darker than the restraintdried paper. The many shives and flecks added a lot of texture to the finished sheets. While I feel that the flax pulp made interesting papers dried in both ways, I will probably not use this flax in the fabrication of my work because I am after a smoother consistency and surface. There are a lot of sources for flax, so I will be testing others, in the same manner as I did with this one. Once again, papermaking has humbled me, showing me that one fiber can yield such varying results.
