Teaching old tools new tricks for papermaking.

People have been making paper for 2,000 years and the basic process has changed little. It's simple enough to form a sheet of paper. The problem with making paper, from an educational point of view, is that either you need several tons of expensive machinery to produce the pulp and to press it, or you use a small kitchen blender. The blender method is time consuming and produces small amounts of pulp. So what's a teacher to do?

The Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts in Racine, Wisconsin, provides hands-on papermaking experiences for as many as 700 children who participate in its Outreach programs. This requires great quantities of paper pulp, so an efficient, timesaving process is essential.

To save others from the trial and error process, we'd like to share our techniques. Here's what we do.

Shredding the Paper

We recycle used bond paper by running it through an office-sized shredder as the first step in making our pulp. Uncolored bond paper is an adequate substitute for the real thing and provides a workable product for class use. For those who don't have access to a shredder, call local companies and ask for their shredded bond paper. Companies are very helpful in providing us with their shreds, and we provide a service for them by saving them the cost of hauling it away. Old news becomes new art.

Storage

We store the shredded paper in five-gallon vinyl buckets which are also recycled materials - in this case, containers which once held fruit or nut filling from local bakeries. While the bakeries do recycle these buckets themselves, the sheer quantity they receive allows them to donate a number of them to us for paper pulp storage purposes.

Processing the Paper into Pulp

To process the shredded paper into pulp, we use a rebuilt garbage disposal, the type that is mounted under kitchen sinks. Using the grinder to chew up the shredded paper makes a smooth mix and prepares large quantities at a time. Our garbage disposal is mounted in an aluminum sink mounted in a wooden table. The table is just the right height for feeding shreds of paper from above, with sufficient room below the outlet to catch the finely ground pulp in buckets. It's important to keep the sink near a faucet or a hose so that you have a steady stream of water to run through the disposal as the shredded paper is fed into the grinder.

Important Considerations

You have to watch the grinder carefully so that it doesn't overheat. The trick is to run it only for short periods and then let it cool down. A large quantity of paper pulp can be produced in a reasonable amount of time without burning out the grinder, if you allow sufficient down time.

One important consideration is freshness. Because the bond paper already has bleach added to it, the processed pulp can stay fresh for about two weeks, if stored in a cool place.

Another important consideration is the coloring agent used to tint the mix. Commercial pigments for paper are safe for children and have been tested for nontoxicity.

A Hybrid Press

Continuing our tradition of adaptation, we use still another hybrid machine as a press for our sheets of paper pulp. This press allows us to squeeze excess moisture out of myriad slabs of processed pulp after the students have couched, decorated or otherwise made their paper into the desired product.

Our press is based on an idea proposed in the book, Paper by Kids. A hydraulic car jack and board are combined to press the sheets of wet paper between layers of felt, pieces of discarded old wool blankets or imitation car chamois that won't stick to the paper sheets, where they remain until they are flattened out and ready to be put onto drying racks.

Drying the Paper

When projects have been removed from the press, they are placed on racks to dry. The drying racks are made out of hardwood and the kind of plastic strapping used to reinforce shipping boxes. Four pieces of hardwood form the frame, and the strapping materials and lattice make up the racks. These racks have about an inch of space between them to let the air through, so they tend to increase the humidity of the storage space as the papercrafts dry. Using a fan or a dehumidifier helps to keep the humidity within limits and speeds the drying process.

Making the Paper Mold

To make our paper molds, we use embroidery hoops with fine, plastic window screening in them. Materials like the plastic needlepoint canvas used in embroidery projects can also be used for molds and to shape and emboss artwork. Plastic knives, forks and spoons make good embossing tools, as well as hair combs, plastic, wood and metal objects with irregular surfaces.

By using an old method in new ways, we've adapted donated equipment and materials to speed up our paper processing methods and keep up with a demand fueled by the annual influx of 2,000 fourth grade children, as well as Scout troops, adult and children's classes, which would otherwise be hindered by a staff with nowhere near enough time to service them.

Instruction and Inspiration for

Students

Adaptive methods work for us on several levels. They allow us to use a medium for which supplies are difficult to obtain at a reasonable cost; they allow us to provide services for many more people than we could otherwise handle; and they let us put our efforts where they are needed most - providing instruction and inspiration for our students. Our program couldn't exist without the methods we've developed or borrowed from others. We invite all of you to try them. And, if you have suggestions you think might help us out, please let us know. A

Donna Newgord is an educational curator and Pat Kardas is a programming assistant at the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts in Racine, Wisconsin.