Making Paper (7)


Banana leaves, pecan leaves, and Dutch

Mikie is cutting up some dried-up banana leaves and stalks that fell off one of our banana trees out by the Zen garden. I'm going to use it to make a batch of paper with.



Here is the stuff from the last batch. I dried it until it was just the slightest bit damp, then pressed the whole stack for half a day. Now I've got it hung up here to dry completely.



Here is a closer view of a couple of the sheets.



This is my paper-making assistant, Dutch, helping me hang sheets to dry.



Here is another view of Dutch and me. He is supervising very closely to make sure I do a good job.



OK, this looks a bit strange. Here's the deal. We picked a bunch of leaves that fell from the pecan tree in the empty lot next to us. I measured out the dry weight before putting it into this pot. I'm going to boil these for a while with some soda ash. After that is done and they have been thoroughly cleaned I'm going to make a pulp that is half old computer paper and half these pecan leaves. We shall see what happens.

Posted: Sun - September 5, 2004 at 05:17 PM        

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