May 6, 2021

So on this lovely Thursday, I had taken the cook flax and the kenaf fibers and rinsed them on the solution they had been cooked in until the water had run clear. 


I had then started the beating process of the kenaf fibers at  around 11:30am. With the amount of fiber I had, roughly one pound, I decided to add sizing, two tablespoons worth, into the beater along with enough water to completely cover the fiber. Now, sizing is something you add to the fibers to help the actual paper hold up better once it is in sheet form. In order for the beating process to really work, you need to gradually add the fibers into the beater so it does not overwork the large blades. The kenaf had beat until 3pm and I then loaded all the contents into a container to put into the fridge until I  was ready to actually make sheets of paper. 


Now since the beating process takes a good bit of time, I decided it was time to cook the Chinese Mitsumata. In the pot, I had the one pound of soaked water, 3.5 ounces of soda ash (why this is there is in a previous post), and 2 gallons of water. By the time the water was boiling it was around 11:45am and that's when I added the fiber. Each plant has a different cooking time based on my research, so you need to check the fibers pretty often. The first time I checked it was around 12:30 and it had already been tearing apart rather easily but I figured I would let it cook for a half hour longer. I checked it again at 1 and it seemed ready to me so I removed it from the heat and rinsed it until the water ran clear. 

And that folks is all I did on this day! 


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