On the Materials employed in the Formation of Paper—Method of Preparation—Processes of Comminution, Washing, Bleaching, etc. described—Paper-making by Hand—Paper-making Machine—Sizing Apparatus—Cutting-Machine, etc. explained—General Observations on what are termed Water-Marks—Manner of effecting the same—Importance frequently attached to them—Ireland’s Fabrication of the Shakspeare MSS.—Difficulty in procuring suitable Paper for the purpose—On the perfection to which Water-Marks have now attained, especially with reference to the production of Light and Shade, as seen in the New Bank Note, etc., etc.
In the present chapter it will be my object to take as general a glance at the principles of paper making, as in the former it was my endeavour to treat its history.
First then, we have to notice the nature of some of the materials employed. And although everybody is supposed to know that paper is made from rags, it may, perhaps, be excuseable to consider of what the rags themselves originally were composed. Unquestionably, the simplest definition one could give would be, fragments of worn-out clothing; and by clothing, no doubt, we all sufficiently understand the dress, vesture or garments usually adopted by man. Still we have to ask ourselves of what are these articles of clothing composed? It has been somewhat shrewdly remarked in every instance, of a something of which man has previously denuded something else. At one time (as we all know) he cunningly entraps innumerable individuals, of the fox, weazel, and squirrel tribes, to strip them of their warm and valuable fur. At another, he hatches and feeds legions of caterpillars, that he may rob them of the defensive padding which they spin to protect their helplessness while passing through the chrysalis state. Sometimes he pastures the sheep for its skin and its wool, occasionally setting so little store by the carcase as to melt it into tallow, or burn it as fuel. And even mother earth herself is treated with no greater forbearance, by alternately feeding her up with manure, and teazing and tormenting her surface with tillage, she is coaxed and compelled to send forth a living vegetable down, which is shorn, plucked and plundered from her bosom, in the shape of cotton, flax, and hemp.
And all those silks, woollens, flax, hemp, and cotton, in all their varied forms, whether as cambric, lace, linen, holland, fustian, corduroy, bagging, canvas, or even as cables, are or can be used in the manufacture of paper of one kind or another. Still, when we speak of rags, as of necessity, they accumulate, and are gathered up by those who make it their business to collect them, they are very far from answering the purposes of paper making. Rags, to the paper-maker, are almost as various in point of quality or distinction, as the materials which are sought after through the influence of fashion. Thus, the paper maker, in buying rags, requires to know exactly of what the bulk is composed. If he is a manufacturer of white papers, no matter whether intended for writing or printing, silk or woollen rags, would be found altogether useless, inasmuch, as is well known, the bleach will fail to act upon any animal substance whatever. And although he may purchase even a mixture in proper proportions adapted for the quality he is in the habit of supplying, it is as essential in the processes of preparation, that they shall be previously separated. Cotton in its raw state, as may be readily conceived, requires far less preparation than a strong hempen fabric, and thus, to meet the requirements of the paper-maker, we have rags classed under different denominations, as for instance, besides Fines and Seconds, we have Thirds, which are composed of fustians, corduroy, and similar fabrics; Stamps or Prints (as they are termed by the paper-maker), which are coloured rags, and also innumerable foreign rags, distinguished by certain well-known marks, indicating their various peculiarities. I might mention, however, that although by far the greater portion of the materials employed are such as we have already alluded to, it is not from their possessing any exclusive suitableness—since various fibrous vegetable substances have frequently been used, and are indeed still successfully employed—but rather on account of their comparatively trifling value, arising from the limited use to which they are otherwise applicable. The agitation of late, which was partly-occasioned by the war, and partly by a sudden and unprecedented demand, that there was a great scarcity of fibrous materials fit to be used in paper making, coupled with an advance in the price of at least twenty per cent., and still further heightened by the offer of £1,000 to any one who could procure an advantageous substitute, has necessarily called forth many suggestions, but, to quote the words of Dr. Forbes Royle, “The generality of modern experimentalists seem to be wholly unacquainted with the labours of their predecessors, many of them commencing improvement by repeating experiments which had already been made, and announcing results as new, which had long previously been ascertained.” The latest suggestion of the kind, and indeed the only one worth referring to, is that which Lord Derby recently brought forward in the House of Lords. He first referred to a Bill before the other House of Parliament for incorporating a company established for the manufacture of paper from flax straw. Of course there is little new in this. The rags or materials already employed, are composed, as everybody knows, to a very great extent, of the fibre of flax, and besides, possess this great advantage, that they have been repeatedly prepared for paper making by the numerous alkaline washings which they necessarily receive during their period of use, which, if left to the paper-maker, as would be the case with flax in its raw state, to be done all at once, (and it must be done before the fibre is fit for use,) would add so fearfully to the expense, as to render its adoption for printing or writing paper altogether unadvisable. However, Lord Derby proceeds—“It was proposed to employ the fibres of various plants indigenous to the West Indies, such as the plantain, the aloe, and others, which grow in vast abundance, and which were utterly valueless at the present moment. He need not say, that an immense abundance of this material could be produced; and he wished only to mention, that on one estate in Demerara no less than 160,000 plantain trees were cut down every year, the trees going to waste, as they were cut down only for the purpose of getting at the fruit; and this wasted material contained 250 tons of fibre, capable of being manufactured into paper.”
Now, admitting all this, which Lord Derby is reported to have said, I can again assert that there is nothing whatever new in it. I have specimens of paper from the same materials, which were made several years ago. The cost, however, of reducing the plantain into fibre, coupled with the expense of freight, was found, and will still be found, to bring up the price so much, as to effectually exclude it from the manufacture of paper; for this simple reason, that rags, of necessity, must continue accumulating, and before it will answer the purpose of the paper-maker to employ new material—which is not so well adapted for his purpose as the old—he must be enabled to purchase it for considerably less than it would be worth in the manufacture of textile fabrics.
All that can be said as to the suitableness of fibre in general may be summed up in very few words; any vegetable fibre having a corrugated edge, which will enable it to cohere in the mass, is fit for the purposes of paper making; the extent to which such might be applied can solely be determined by the question of cost in its production; and hitherto, everything proposed has been excluded, as in the case of the plantain or banana, either by the cost of freight, the cost of preparation, or the expenses combined.
To convey some idea of the number of substances which have been really tried; in the Library of the British Museum may be seen a book, printed in low Dutch, containing upwards of sixty specimens of paper, made of different materials, the result of one man’s experiments alone, so far back as the year 1772. In fact, almost every species of tough fibrous vegetable, and even animal substance, has at one time or another been employed: even the roots of trees, their bark, the bine of hops, the tendrils of the vine, the stalks of the nettle, the common thistle, the stem of the hollyhock, the sugar cane, cabbage stalks, wood shavings, saw dust, hay, straw, willow, and the like.
At the present time straw is occasionally used, sometimes in connection with other materials, such as linen or cotton rags, and even with considerable advantage, providing the processes of preparation are thoroughly understood. Where such is not the case, and the silica contained in the straw has not been destroyed (by means of a strong alkali), the paper will invariably be found more or less brittle; in some cases so much so as to be hardly applicable to any purpose whatever of practical utility. Specimens, numbered 18 and 19, affixed at the end of this work, are manufactured from as much as 80 per cent. straw and 20 per cent. rope, and certainly, as regards toughness, are excellent. No. 20, is manufactured almost entirely from wheat straw, which is first bleached to the utmost, and then blued by an admixture of ultramarine. The waste, however, which the straw undergoes, in addition to a most expensive process of preparation, necessarily precludes its adoption to any great extent.
An ingenious invention has recently been patented for converting large blocks of wood into paper pulp; but to what extent it is likely to receive favourable attention at the hands of paper makers generally, is quite impossible to say. The invention is very simple, consisting merely of a wooden box enclosing a grindstone, which has a roughened surface, and against which the blocks of wood are kept in close contact by a lever, a small stream of water being allowed to flow upon the stone as it turns, in order to free it of the pulp, and to assist in carrying it off through an outlet at the bottom. Of course, it is not expected, that the pulp thus produced should be employed for any but the coarser kinds of paper, in the manufacture of which there has hitherto been found the greatest scarcity of material. For all writing and printing purposes, which manifestly are the most important, nothing has yet been discovered, to lessen the value of rags, neither is it at all probable that there will be; indeed, the value of paper for some time past has considerably declined, while during the most exciting period of last year, the scarcity so much talked of, was, in fact, comparatively trifling.