Doing the Paper Dance:
Paper Mills in Appleton, Wisconsin

January 6, 2007

It is possible that for some people a trip to the paper museum would not be completely engrossing.. but for us it definitely was. We arrived knowing little about how paper is made, and left having made our own paper.. and pretty confident that we could make paper at home. (Needless to say Emily is excited about that prospect!)

The Paper Discovery Center is located down next to the Fox River. A whole series of wherehouses down along the river seem to be remnants of the paper business.. which is still present in the area, but which evidently outgrew these brick buildings. In Appleton one complex has been turned into an apartment building, and then just down the way is this center.

The Paper Discovery Center features a wall of paper hall-of-famers. Granted, these people are not household names.. but they appear to have served their chosen industry well. Every industry, I imagine, could field a wall like this..

So how is paper made? This diagram does a pretty good job answering that question. Take wood chips and add white liquor. With heat and time the white liquor breaks the wood chips down into a moist pulp. Then the pulp has to be separated from the black liquor which is created in the process of breaking down the wood. That wood pulp is the basis for paper. It should also be noted that different kinds of wood will yield different kinds of pulp.. with eventual differences in paper properties.

In making paper for oneself it is possible to skip the wood pulping process and simply break down the paper into pulp.. which can then be re-used to form new paper. All it takes to break down pulp is water and a food processor. One can also put into the mix different kinds of paper and different colors.. and even bits of flower petals. All this is then settled onto a screen and merges together to become a new sheet of paper:

You may notice that there are three pieces of paper above.. for indeed, we were three at the Paper Discovery Center.

That's me.. tightening the screw in order to flatten the paper.

That's Emily.. pregnant but still willing to dance..

And that is the man who will be known to readers of this blog as Mr. Magneto.