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Using what we have learnt with the wattle/acacia paper experiment, we wanted to try again with a lighter wood, in order to get a lighter coloured end result.

We found this patch of what we think is silver poplar, or some kind of sycamore. Either way, it is a light wood with a really nice coloured inner bark that we can hopefully use to make a whiteish piece of paper. The patch is in the old Albany village in Auckland and looks severely under cared for. We foraged a few downed and dead branches from trees that had been damaged in a recent storm.

Using a hatchet we peeled back through the outer green layer of bark to reveal the soft white bark underneath. It’s important when looking for this wood to look for recently downed branches so the wood is still green and supple, that way it hasn’t hardened into wood and wouldn’t be good for making paper. We stripped this back to peel off the flexible inner bark/outer wood (not the hardened wooden core) and have started the soaking process. We skipped the drying stage for this one as last time we did that with the wattle, the sun darkened the colour quite significantly, that might have been because of the wood, but we didn’t want to risk it.

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Some more shots of the piece of wattle/acacia paper we made!

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Part 2 of papermaking

Then the fibers were cut into 1cm pieces. Maybe next time we’d try shorter, the final paper was a bit fibrous looking, and cutting it shorter might have made for a smoother final product.

Then the fibers were cut into 1cm pieces. Maybe next time we’d try shorter, the final paper was a bit fibrous looking, and cutting it shorter might have made for a smoother final product.

The sign we used that they were done was when the water turned a bit milky, hard to describe but there was definitely a transition as the fire res fully broke down and seemed way more spindly and cobweb like when suspended in water. Overall this part of the process was pretty labor intensive. Perhaps if we had boiled it for the full 4hours like we wanted it would of been easier, we’ll know next time.

The frame and tub setup. The wood frames were made to be the biggest size for the biggest tub we could find around the garage, in order to give us the biggest sheet of paper we could make.

The frame sitting in the water, you can see the water level here that shows how much the frame sinks into the water. This water that is between the surface of the water and the mosquito netting of the frame is water medium that we can spread the pulp out in to get an even sheet of paper.

Spreading the paper pulp out in the water, tapping using the hands to encourage an even distribution.

Next the paper sheet is ‘pulled’ by lifting the frame up out of the water, keeping it flat and lifting slowly to evenly drain and keep the pulp evenly distributed.

Paper sheet after sitting in the sun for a few hours.

Paper after drying inside for 5 days, you can see there’s quite a heavy texture, next time I think trying to break the pulp down further might give a more even texture.

After lifting the sheet out of the frame, we ran a smooth wooden block over the surface, pressing so as to compress the fibres into a more even layer. Probably we should also do this after the first few hours so the fibres are still wet and can mesh better. At this stage it definitely resulted in a flatter and more even surface, but still not very smooth.

Final sheet of paper. Not totally sure if it needs another few days to dry further, but it’s looking great so far. The color is obviously not ideal, but we knew that going in and are happy with how the test went anyway. The paper is really flexible, can be rolled up tight. We haven’t tried folding and creasing it yet cause we’re nervous, but I think it might handle it.

Final thoughts: Successful first test of the process. Color is not ideal but we are already looking for a lighter barked tree to fix this problem. Texture is a bit rough which we’re going to try to increase the boil time of the bark to at least 4 hours, beat the pulp more, and press the surface with a smooth block when the fibres are still wet.

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After watching the liziqi video about papermaking, Irene and I decided we wanted to try it ourselves

We wanted to try to make some paper to accompany our experiments in natural watercolor pigment making. We spent a lot of time looking for the right tree by walking around Hamish’s parents property looking for something with a light colored bark, so that we would hopefully end up with a light enough piece of paper to s]draw on in the end with our clay pigments.

We settled on an Acacia/Wattle tree, as one had blown over in a big storm and it had a light colored bark.

We started by stripping some long strands of bark of the tree stump that was left in the ground, trying to get even layers of the inner bark (first layer underneath the hard, craggily exterior).

We then separated the inner and outer bark, discarding the outer so that we were left with the lighter and more supple inner bark to go forward with.

In the papermaking video by Liziqi that we were using as a guide, she hangs out the bark to dry before soaking. We did this step, but after drying out the color of the bark turned quite orange/red, which was disappointing. We knew we wanted to keep looking for a whiter barked tree, but decided that as a test run of our process, we would keep going with the acacia bark we had gathered on the property

After letting the bark dry for 6 days in the sun, we placed it in a bucket to soak for another 8.

During the time when it was soaking, we made the frames we would use to pull the sheets when we have finished processing the bark into pulp. The frames were made with some scrap wood that was around ~4cm/~1.5” thick. This would mean that when the frame sits in the water, it would sit into the water by about 1-2cm. One side of the frame was covered with two layers of mosquito netting, pulled tight and stapled. We pulled it really tight so that when we put the soaked pulp on top of it and pull the sheet it didn’t deform under the weight, it was probably a bit overkill, but better too tight that too loose.

During the soaking time we also gathered the ash to make the caustic solution that would be used to boil the bark in. We did this by gathering the coals and ash from the pizza oven, sifting out the coals to leave us with wood ash, which would be mixed and boiled with water to make a caustic solution used to break down the bark into fibers. The 400g ash was mixed with 4l of water, boiled for 20minutes, left to cool overnight and strained through a sieve to catch any final impurities.

At this point we have everything we need to begin the next phase of the process, which compared to the slow pace of the first (drying and soaking), happens very quickly.

After soaking the bark for over a week, it was much softer. This allowed us to bend and peel away some of the tough outer bark and leave the softest rigorous material to make our paper with.

Took a quick weight of the bark we had, just to get an idea on how much bark we would need for each sheet of paper. With this trial process we ended up using all 250g of bark for one sheet of paper.

For boiling, we tied the bark in a bundle with a piece of string so we could lower it into the solution without touching it. The solution is not great for the skin, maybe even harmful, so didn’t want to particularly touch it.

We boiled it on a camp stove outside so the fumes weren’t hurting anyone using two half cans of butane we had left over. This resulted in about 2 hours of boiling time before the gas ran out, we were hoping for longer (4+) but didn’t have any extra cans and figured we’d try it out with just that to see how it worked.

After a few hours of boiling and a few extra hours of steeping, the whole mix had turned black, maybe from the tannins in the wood? Not sure tbh. This was a bit worrying because we really wanted the paper to be as light as possible, but after 4/5 washes under running water the bark the light brown color came back.

Here it was really amazing to see the result of boiling in the ash solution. The bark, which was previously a bunch of pieces, now had broken down into a dense network of fibers, and seemed way more like what we would need to make paper!

Continued in part 2

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more colors!

we wanted to find more colors, specifically the new zealand red clay known as kokowai.

however, a web search only revealed areas in NZ that were too far to travel to during lockdown. but i started noticing the various colors of exposed clay during our errand runs to albany. so one day we just drove down the road, not too far from hamish’s parents house at all, and would illegally park on the side of the road whenever we saw a patch of colorful earth.

from this site we harvested two samples: a rust red, and a more pinkish clay that looked like it had some white pigment mixed into it.

PROCESS

we mixed the samples with warm water and poured it through cheesecloth into jars. we waited 1-2 days for the sediment/clay/pigment to settle and siphoned the water off.

poured the samples onto plastic trays in a thin layer. after a couple days, the clay dried and characteristic crackles appeared. it was also neat to see the colors of the cheesecloth that we’d used for the initial filter — gave us the idea to try dyeing with our clays.

as watercolor, the colors were striking. the pinkish sample was a bit chalky and more difficult to blend, and neither were of the same consistency as Sample 2 from the creek. this "filtering" process was more labor intensive than what we did for Sample 2, so i wonder if there was something about the naturally filtered clay we found down by the creek that was worth learning more about.

all in all it was a good reminder that sometimes one doesn’t have to travel far from home to find what one seeks.