Shop PortfoliosVolunteers

Interview with John Stahl

Winter 2002
Winter 2002
:
Volume
17
, Number
2
Article starts on page
23
.

I'm talking with John Stahl, of Leggett, California. I'm going to ask about his beginnings as a hand papermaker, his research into alternative fibers, and his expansion into industrial projects. Our dialog today will include some of his refreshing perspective on the Church of the Living Tree and man's relationship to the environment. John, tell me about your first work with cotton. I've read that you were not impressed with the insecticides used on cotton so you started using other fibers for papermaking.

Purchase Issue

Other Articles in this Issue

John Stahl: I started making paper in the early 1970s. We were just cutting cotton rags with scissors and beating them up, but the first batch of paper came out beautifully. I didn't like the pesticides used on cotton, and I've been interested in alternative fibers from the very beginning. I've used flax, hemp, kenai, abaca, and, increasingly, various weeds and plants that grow wild on my land. I've experimented with all kinds of fibers. AD: You were selling that paper; do you continue to sell it? IS: Yes. Before I started making my own paper, I wrote books, then I printed my books. I got familiar with hand papermaking in San Francisco in the early 1970s. Kathryn and Howard Clark of Twinrocker started out there, then moved to Indiana. Some people who had worked with them and had some of their equipment manifested a little papermaking studio on Haight Street in San Francisco: Waterwheel Paperworks. That's where I began to work with paper. My connection at first was to do letterpress printing on paper they made for their customers. Once I started, I was totally hooked; the depth and relief of letterpress printing on handmade paper are absolutely wonderful. Since I set up my own papermill, I haven't really had a chance to continue my own creative work much. But I am getting back to that. AD: Like editioned letterpress work? IS: Yes, editioned books. I do my own bookbinding, too. I had set up my papermill so that I could publish my books. I realized that I couldn't just be a gentleman papermaker, so I set up a commercial mill where I could do production papermaking, figuring that would support my creative work. I got a Hollander beater, a hydraulic press, a couple of moulds and deckles, and I was off and running. At first, I thought I was WINTER 2002 23
A field of hemp (height can be determined by people standing in the field).  going to support my family from day one by sales of paper. It's been hard, but we're making all kinds of paper. AD: Does the size of your Hollander affect your production output? JS: Yes, very much. I would love to get a ten-pound Hollander to use along with my oId beater, a two-pound Hollander. I'd like to work a lot more with rag, but i takes so long to beat that I just can't keep up with the production. We make paper faster than we can make pulp, and that's always been a problem. AD: Originally you were going the more traditional route of cooking your fiber and then cleaning it and beating it. But it looks like you're investigating research bein done by Dr. Krotov, where you break those alternative fibers into chips. JS: The Krotov project is a commercial application using alternative fibers. Its principal interest for me is that it doesn't just use the bast fiber of, say, hemp or flax kenaf. It uses the whole stalk. Take the case of hemp, which is one of the early fiber was experimenting with here in Northern California, simply because it was available in abundant quantities. Papermaking with hemp usually involves separating the bast fiber from the core, then cooking and processing the bast. The idea of the Krotov pulper is to make paper out of the whole stalk; the core of hemp is high in cellulose just has very short fibers. It's also high in hemicellulose. The way the Krotov paper works, the hemicellulose is retained, whereas if you cook with soda you lose the hemicellulose. This process is very interesting to me, since I have always cooked much of my fiber and pulp from raw materials. I immediately appreciated the fits of having a new technology for the very important process of preparing pulp. AD: How has this technology translated into other countries? JS: I learned about this process six or seven years ago. In addition to using whole stalk rather than just the bast fiber, it's also an ingenious and efficient desi which one unit does the cooking, the rinsing, and the cleaning of the fiber, alI In continuous process. All of the chemicals used in it are extracted, recovered, reused, because it operates as a closed loop. It's entirely sealed and pressurized. We don't have a prototype yet, but I've had a lot of interest from all O\'er world. We targeted Canada initially, not only for the hemp they grow but also flax. I think that it's altogether wrong and stupid to cut down ancient forests for mail at the same time that perfectly good raw materials are being discarded. 1 lb amount of flax straw in Canada and rice straw in California that is burned off the fields is just unbelievable. They grow seed flax in Canada for the oiL Then they discard the straw, which is wonderful for papermaking, and burn it. AD: As I understand it, the commercial paper Industry in general has been slow about using alternative fibers because they're geared towards wood as J source and they're hesitant to spend the money, energy, and resources to switch. IS: That's right, and the industry is very competitive. The only way to compete is by using massive installations making a thousand tons of paper or more .1 day. The companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the paper lines. They can't even shut those things down without losing millions of dollars a day, much less change them. It's very expensive. AD: But there are a few companies, like Crane in Massachusetts, with smaller mills, that are using alternative fibers. JS: Right, but it's not easy. A project scaled at fifteen tons per day, like ours would be, is miniscule by Industry standards. A hundred tons a day they call a "mini-mill" Even a project of our size would be expensive, though. It would cost about $4 million to build, well beyond my own means. I've been funding initial research, development, and engineering work, but for the actual construction of the mill, I need other partners. And that's what takes me to Canada, to Mexico, and to Europe. It's interesting that in a market like this our project looks quite viable. Even on our small scale, it looks Tills paper is made from 100% hemp fiber, half of it bleached bast fiber from Spain, the other half whole stalks from anonymous donations of locally grown California hemp. The whole stalks were chipped up and then cooked with sodium hydroxide jar about three hours at a rolling boil. The fiber and water are left to cool down overnight and then rinsed over and over, until the rinse water is clean enough to drink. Hydrogen peroxide is then added; this is rinsed out after two days. The local material is beaten down to a fine stage and then mixed with the Spanish hemp for the final beating. The sheets are loft dried. like our costs would be less than the industry's. And, of course, we're going to be getting much better quality pulp, because hemp and flax are way up there, with 70% and 80% cellulose, whereas wood chips are down in the range of 30%. AD: So, the final product that you're aiming for is not general, everyday photocopy paper, but perhaps stationery? I'm curious. IS: One possibility is to use a variety of materials. We could use only the best materials. We could set up a mill to use pure hemp, for instance, or flax; we could make a very fine pulp or paper. But I'm thinking that the best way to use this technology is to make a pulp that blends hemp, flax, or kenaf with agricultural waste products, like wheat straw or rice straw. These are now simply burned or discarded, but they can be part of a formula for a fine paper. I just finished a project for some people in Canada, in which we used whole-stalk flax pulp with wheat straw, about 80% wheat straw and 20% flax. The concept was to make a paper that is inexpensive and yet retains enough quality for better applications. If you just make paper out of wheat straw, it's kind of humble. AD: Yes, it's not very strong unless you cut it with something else. IS: But if you use flax blended with wheat straw, you get a very durable and usable paper and you keep your costs down. So, this is a commercial way to go, to aim for a general-purpose paper that can be marketed as a tree-free alternative but costs no more than conventional paper. WINTER 2002
A pile of hemp stalks, ready for processing.  AD: Tell me about the Church of the Living Tree. JS: It's been underlying everything we've been doing. I've loved trees all my life. It seems to me a foolish waste of resources to cut down trees. Live trees are worth more than dead ones, and whenever you have some kind of material you should use it for its highest value first. You don't cook down a thoroughbred race horse for glue, and you don't melt down medieval stained glass windows to make jelly jars. Forests have been cut down beyond their capacity to regrow. If you must cut down a tree, at least use it to build a cathedral that will last for thousands of years, don't just chip it up for pulp and paper that will be buried as landfill within a few weeks. AD: What impresses me is that instead of just talking about these things, you're getting people to donate land; you're getting them to grow trees; you've got volunteers involved-a non-capitalist approach to life. JS: It's interesting, though, because it makes a loop. To make the Krotov mill project work, it's not enough to tell people: "All of this destruction of trees is ruining our environment, so why don't we do the right thing and leave those trees alone and make paper this other way and the land will reward us." That's the kind of a pitch that you don't make! A project that makes lots of money for the promoters, even if it seriously compromises the earth, is easy to sell. But a project with environmental benefits makes investors nervous, because they think the benefits will reduce their profits. This project will make lots of money for the promoters because so much cellulose material is currently being discarded. We could get a million tons of flax straw ever: year from Canada, and we would pay about $5 per ton for it, about the cost of gathering it up and carting it off the land. So, if we can take the discarded material, make a better quality pulp out of it using a more efficient process, and then sell it for the same price as wood-based paper, we're going to be way ahead financially. AD: Is that what your upcoming trip to Europe is about? JS: Yes. The economy in parts of Europe is very depressed. They're looking for an alternative industry. Hemp is a crop that the farmers could grow and then turn into a valuable product. The people interested in this project want profits. I have to present it like that, otherwise it's not going to proceed. Nobody wants to just donate to the earth. Economic realities really are fundamental. If I have a better way to make paper, it's got to show up on the bottom line in the long run, or it really isn't better. the bottom line. The Federal government subsidizes the logging industry by leasing forest lands to loggers for pennies an acre, by footing the cost of building roads for loggers, and by taxing motorists who drive on the highways. Those roads are constantly being repaired, making them deeper, thicker, stronger. They're not making those roads for cars. They're building them to support the weight of monstrous logging trucks. Those trucks have to pay high taxes, but it's still a subsidy. All of the different ways in which the logging industry is subsidized tilts the economics unrealistically in favor of existing papermaking technology. And the industry doesn't even consider the loss to the environment of its technology, of the loss of trees despite their benefit to the climate and for restoring oxygen to the earth. If these costs were really factored in, you'd find that making pulp from trees is not all that profitable. If we can make a better paper cheaper, and at less cost to the environment, we're going to have people lining up around the block to buy it. I'll give you an anecdote that illustrates the strength of the market. There is a company that makes hemp sandals. We got to talking and I told them they could send me their worn out sandals, for the pulp mill. AD: I remember seeing a photo on your website of that. I thought, "What is this guy doing cooking sandals?!" IS: It was mostly just a promotional gimmick, but this company now publishes on their labels: "When your sandals wear out you can send them to Earth, Pulp, and Paper"-that's us-"to be remade into paper." People do this all the time, and they often end them by Priority Mail. These people are spending $5 just for the satisfaction of knowing their sandals will be repulped into paper. They can throw those sandals into the landfill for free, but they box them up, take them down to the post office, and pay to send them to me, just for the abstract sense that they're doing something right, recycling their sandals for the earth. People like the idea. AD: They're committed to the mission of it. IS: That's an indication to me that there is a really strong commitment to the earth. I see it more now than when I was a kid. Back then we thought that trees would go on forever, and we could dump our effluent in the river and it would wash into the ocean. We're finding out now that the trees do not go on forever; the forest is not endless.
An apple crusher, which Stahl uses for crushing seashells for inclusion in a paper called "Wild Ocean." He has also tried using it as a decorticator. Hemp fiber cooking. less. And you can't dump your toxic waste in the ocean without the ocean itself suffering. We've got this little spaceship earth and we have to learn how to put systems together so that materials are continuously recycled and used as efficiently as possible. A lot of people want to do something for the earth. For some, because of their positions and what they do in the world, there's not a lot they can do, except send me a pair of their old sandals. Now, with the potential for building a commercial pulp mill that would use Dr. Krotov's process, I find myself involved in a project that really has a chance to make a big difference. AD: Is there something that amateur papermakers could adapt from this research you've done, that would bring them into the less labor-intensive arena without having the expensive equipment? JS: The Krotov process uses an organic solvent and you have to be able to recover all of it in order to make the process economically viable. You need to have pressurized tanks and all kinds of recovery equipment to use his actual chemical process. And his process is more than just chemical, it's a whole physical design. Most hand papermakers who work with alternative fibers are interested in only the very best and finest materials, whereas I've been investigating the potential of alternative fibers for commercial applications. This means that while I have made bast fiber hemp paper, the amount of processing is phenomenal. To make production quantities of a pure bast fiber paper by separating and processing the bast fiber is a totally Herculean task. There's no way to recover your costs through the sale of the paper. But I have learned some ideas from Dr. Krotov's work. I don't have to limit myself to traditional notions of papermaking. We now make paper using the whole stalk of hemp. It's a lot of effort, but it's less work than separating the bast fiber first, which we haven't really found a good way to do. We've tried everything for preparing bast fiber, from separating it when it's green to separating it dry to retting it. This amounts to so much labor that it actually makes a lot of sense to use the whole stalk. You don't get the same quality paper, especially with a soda cook, but you're able to get more from it. I have a lot of call for hemp paper, and I am now able to make large quantities. We start with the raw stalks, then we chip them up. We cook those down in our big forty-gallon steamjacketed kettle in a soda process. The core has more lignin than the bast fiber, so we thought at first that chipping it up and cooking it just once was not adequate. We initially worked out a method to cook it first, then clean it and rinse it; then beat it until it was like half-stuff. Then we strained it and extracted the water, brought it back to our cooker and did the whole thing all over again. AD: In both cases did you cook with soda ash? JS: I use sodium hydroxide, which is the strongest alkali. It's serious stuff. I tried using soda ash and calcium hydroxide, but we get the best results, especially with hemp, with stronger alkalis. After we do all of this cooking and cleaning, it's really stinky. We would beat the hemp really fine and then drain it and recook it. I was amazed at how much black liquor we could get after our second cook. So, after the second cook, we determined to do a third cook. AD: Ah, interesting. IS: A third cook! Then we put it in the beater to bring the particle size way down so it was practically pulp. AD: So, instead of the labor of removing the unwanted material by hand, you're putting the labor into your back, emptying and lifting the kettle and emptying the beater. But that must still save time. ]S: If you're really going to cook that stuff down to a fine pulp, it's a lot of work. e later discovered that, by using smaller loads and harder cooks, we could get by with a single cook, which is how we do it now. AD: Do you have interns or helpers to come work at your place? And do they live vith you? Do they stay with you only during certain seasons? JS: We're set up as a non-profit community. We invite volunteers to work about twenty hours a week in exchange for room and board. We get some really nice people, and on the whole it works out pretty well. We have sixty-five acres here, with little cabins and several buildings. We just finished a whole new building, which has room for several more people. Because we make paper all year and we have gardens where we grow food, we need people year-round. If people want to spend time just making paper, we take them on that basis. AD: Can more info be gotten from your web-site? IS: Yes, there's more on the web-site: www.tree.org. It has information about the Church of the Living Tree, some of my articles about the importance of trees, indications of what we do in papermaking, a list of books we publish, and a little bit about our project with the Krotov pulper. AD: When an intern comes, you're sharing ideas, right? You don't have copyrights on things, do you? You're interested in sharing the information. JS: Yes, I'm interested in sharing. I've been told I should be a consultant. People write, e-mail, and call, and I tell them everything they want to know for free. Certain types of work we're trying to do for profit: we sell paper; I sell books; I'm trying to get these pulp mills going. But I don't think people have to make a profit at everything they do. If someone wants to learn about my experiments with alternative building techniques using hemp hurds and lime, for example, I'm happy to tell them all about it. Why should I try to keep that a mystery? Information should be free.