This is going to be a sweet print.
This is from what I had left of my grapevine fiber. It's a tough sheet of paper. |
5 minutes later, a bowl of crap. |
Red Hot Poker fibers before the beatings. |
There is a greenish tinge to my test. Between 7 and 8 is good for paper I really need to get some strips for this stuff, though. |
Black and white proof of my pike. 4 more blocks to go. 25x17 or so. |
Bob's Reaper, Bob keeps getting better. |
Im going to do this, then I will be unbeatable! |
Test sheet of the interior fibers from the red hot pokers. This is the stuff I need to be using. High quality paper. The good stuff. Oh yeah. |
Went to Dobbins Landing. I need a new duck. I took his photo. He took issue. |
Bob's most recent illustration. I think he is learning something. Not too shabby. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kniphofia a small plot of this red hot poker plant that I used for paper making fiber |
I harvested all the brown stuff, too. Let nature do half the work. |
In the cooker, 3/4 full of dry fiber. I added water to about half way, and about 5 tablespoons of soda ash. I let it boil for 2 1/2 hours. Just until the fibers pulled apart easily. |
Then I squeezed most the water out, and hammered the bejeezus out of it. |
Close up of my red hot poker pulp. It looks like cow pie. |
My lump of pulp after about 30-45 min of beating. |
I didn't even put a dent in the harvested supply. |
my neighbors gave me some grass that they had as a decorative element in their yard. John and I put it in buckets of water. |
I cooked some of it on John's grill for about 2 and a half hours. |