Everyone has never seen it, and they don't know that wood can be used to make paper, only that bamboo can.

Watch the high pet peel the pine wood. Why can't peeling and peeling be made into paper? OK! The green sandalwood bark used to make rice paper, as well as the mulberry bark, have long been used to make paper, but the bark of this pine wood is very different from the wood core inside, it is difficult to handle, there are many impurities, and it is not cost-effective to make paper.

The wood has been cut into small pieces, (one inch long and three minutes thick), cut so small that the purpose is to steam quickly.

Gao Pet took out a very large pressure cooker, which was made by people when he arrived in Ningguo, with a diameter of nearly three feet and a height of nearly three feet. The lid is connected to the pot body with a lock, and the lid is an air cap that rotates when the pressure inside reaches a certain level.

"This is my new pot here, I call it a pressure cooker, and I use it to cook faster and save several times the time. Of course, in addition to steaming wood, it can also be used for cooking and stewing soups. ”

"Someone just asked, is it okay to use an ordinary iron pot? That's a good question, of course it's okay, it's just faster and more fuel-efficient with a pot like mine. These are all money, saving labor, saving fuelwood or coal, and can do a lot of things, so every link of the enterprise must consider the cost. ”

Now put all the wood in, add water, and add the cooking agent: sodium sulfide.

"Originally, we used lime as a cooking agent, and we can also use alkali. Different materials have different efficiency, and the paper made is also different. Originally, lime had to be steamed for eight or nine days before it was good. ”

Add (alkali (soda), sulfurous, or sulfate. Among them, sodium sulfide Na2S is a more commonly used method, sulfurous acid paper is whiter and does not need to be bleached, the paper is soft, the mechanical properties are weak, and it is suitable for paper towel papermaking. Alkaline pulp is soft, high opacity, strong in physical properties, but coarser in fiber. The performance of Na2S is more comprehensive, and after whitening, the paper is very white. Various chemicals have a great impact on the quality of paper.

"Alright, let's put the lid on". This high-pressure casting pot is different from the ordinary one is the lid, which he fastens with a lock to make the lid close to the pot body. ”

"It will be fine in two hours, until the wood is soft and all floating. Of course we can't see it, but we'll come back later. We'll use this time to do something else."

After Gao Pet got this time right, he took everyone to see the bleaching and beater. He took everyone to the place where the rice paper materials were steamed and boiled at the original Guan family.

High paste paper to take out the safety powder (even sodium dithionite).

The pulp originally made by the Guan family is yellow, and if it is not bleached, it cannot be made into white paper. This yellow paper, the Guan family bleached it with the method of sulfur fumigation, this method used to be top secret, but today it is also shown to everyone with the consent of the Guan family. As we all know, the paper of the Guan family or some other paper paper is the same, it will still turn yellow after a period of time, and it will change color after a long time.

"There won't be such a phenomenon after dealing with the insurance powder I brought."

As for whether it will change color over time, it can't be verified today, but we can always use time to verify.

The specific method is very simple, use it in the pulp pool, put in the safety powder, add water to dilute the pulp to a depth of 3-5%, enter the pulp tank, add sodium dithionite, 0.2-1%, and the temperature is 40-60 degrees. Stir. Half an hour will be fine, and when it is done, rinse the potions with clean water. Everyone was curious.

But this medication should be noted, the surrounding area should be ventilated, and there should be no open flame, otherwise it will explode. Later, when the high pet arrived, the boiler could be heated with steam instead of the pot. Security is much better. At that time, it is enough to pass the pipe vapor everywhere. It is very convenient to use it when you want to use it, and turn it off when you don't want to use it, and it is more convenient for the Li family to use steam for silk reeling and dyeing and finishing.

Because it was boiled in a pot for experiments, everyone soon saw that the original yellow pulp had turned snow-white. Pulp cleaning and squeezing out of water.

"The above process we call it pulping, and the pulp that is done in this way is put there, and then taken out and used when it is needed. The next step is called modulation. ”

"The process of making different paper is different, and the materials added are also different."

"The first step is to loose pulp, to disperse the pulp into the pulp pool"

"The second step is beating."

Pulping causes the fibers to deform, swell, crush and cut off and fine fibrosis. Pulping is an important process that affects the paper, one is to destroy the cellulose cell wall, and the other is to break up the fibers to avoid clumping and making the sizing uniform. It has two methods, but the nature of the paper produced by the two methods is different. The first is free pulping, with a sharp knife, the knife distance is dense, the paper fiber is short, the ink is good, but it is easy to fluff and has poor smoothness. The other is viscous beating, which is the principle of rupture and grinding. Crushing with a blunt knife, a wider knife distance beating, the slurry is tighter, the physical property is stronger, the transparency is high, it is not easy to flex, but it is not easy to ink, and the elasticity is poor. Therefore, the method and time of pulping should be selected according to the use of the paper. This is the process that most affects the performance of the paper. How to beat the paper with different needs and to what extent, it is necessary to do experiments to draw conclusions.

"The two manual beaters I made at this time, you can see the difference between the knife and the knife distance."

After the pulping is completed, the third step is to add rubber and filler: commonly used fillers are talcum powder, white clay (expansive soil), zinc white powder or lithopone powder (with luminous effect), starch paste such as corn flour and wax, etc. Here I bring clay and lithopone powder (zinc sulfide plus barium sulfate). Rubber rosin gum. Plus precipitant alum.

"I didn't bring rosin gum, the Guan family has rosin and alkali, and I will make rosin gum for you on the spot."

Rosin is saponified with alkali in hot water to make part of the saponification, so that it contains 25%-40% of free rosin or 70%-90% of free rosin, white gum.

This method of making rosin gum is actually the way we make soap. This soap made of rosin has the strongest detergency and makes a super soap. But this rosin gum, that is, can not be made into soap, the method of control lies in the amount of alkali.

"When used, it is first filtered, then added to the pulp, and alum is used as a precipitant to precipitate the rubber on the fiber."

"Actually, the Guan family used the juice of star fruit vine when making paper, which played the same role as rosin gum, but the effect was much worse."

After the pulp is prepared, it can be copied.

This pulp is very thick and cannot be copied directly, and there are also some impurities and some pulp that has not been dissolved, and these pulp must be filtered and removed after dilution.

"Father Guan, you have someone copy out some paper from these, and let's see how the steaming is going over there."

Regardless of the fact that the father arranged for the personnel to make paper. Gao Pet and his gang returned to the steaming scene. Gao Pet let people extinguish the fire, in order to speed up the time, and let people boil cold water to cool, take off the hard hat on it, and then open the pot, the wooden blocks inside have all become soft and floating.

"You see, in less than two hours, it's completely healed, and it's white." For paper with relatively low requirements in ancient times, there is no need to bleach it at all.

Everyone saw the whole process and admired Gao Pet more and more. It usually takes more than half a year to make paper, and now it can be done in one or two days, and the efficiency is 100 times that of the original. I also saw that a large amount of paper and copper coins could be made every day in the future.

The old copying process also needs to be changed, but some machinery is used, and it is too late to make it. At this time, we see that the surface of this rice paper is relatively rough, the ink is easy to seep, and it is not easy to write and print. But the pattern has been done, and as long as a few days pass, the papermaking technology here will change greatly.

But the craft of this rice paper must also be done, and the rice paper is especially suitable for calligraphy and painting.