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There is an element of predictability in craft, I wrote pretentiously yesterday, and was set to expound on the idea after remembering that it's actually been the subject of scholarly work. HAH!
For almost three hours, I have been battling the slime that could have eaten Washburn...but may have discovered something VERY cheap and VERY useful, if its power can be harnessed.
After getting back my papermaking food processor, this afternoon I couldn't resist giving pulp one more try, this time as a surface treatment for parts of the cardboard desk. I've had some shredded white paper soaking in water for more than a week, since my last pulp experiment ended before it was needed. As I was stirring it, I remembered one of the papermaking additives that came a few months ago.
"Percol" is described as a retention aid for papermaking pulp to hold onto pigment and fillers. I hadn't gotten around to trying it since the cloth I'd been recycling was already died. But maybe it would help the paper shreds hold paste or water, I thought, and added a tablespoon or so to the bin with the paper shreds and water.
A half hour later I came back and the mixture seemed a little slimier than iI remembered, but I figured that some very dilute paste had gotten into the bin at some point. I stirred; it seemed quite a bit slimier. I put some of it in the food processor, added paste and methyl cellulose. Some of the liquid oozed through the top, onto the counter, and sort of kept going. It was surprisingly difficult to wipe up, but I didn't think much about it.
The proccesed pulp looked plausible, but while I was carrying it to the front porch I noticed a few pieces of brown paper had mixed in, so instead of spreading it onto the desk's top, and thinking it wasn't exactly the right consistency, dumped it on the keyboard shelf, sitting upside down waiting for more strips. If nothing else, the pulp would make it thicker and appearance wouldn't matter so much.
I spread it out, and some of it kind of oozed onto the floor. Very hard to wipe up--not that it was stiff, or super-sticky. It wasn't even that wet. But it used a zillion paper towels, and they all got sticky.
Anyway, it still didn't seem that strange, and I started covering the spread out pulp with paper (a normal precaution against flying dog hair, moths and other stuff that can fall on it...sometimes I can lift the paper and sometimes it sticks. Either way is fine.)
As I smoothed the paper out, I noticed that there were absolutely no air bubbles. As I kept smoothing, the paper moved with the pulp like plastic wrap over bread dough. But an hour and a half later I was still covering it with paper. The pulp was sort of oozing through each layer...it's very hard to describe. This wasn't like water, with each successive layer of paper being less wet. Imagine covering bread dough with plastic wrap and the consistency of the top of the wrap turns into the dough.
None of the paper layers had air bubbles at all. Each turned sticky, as did all paper that came into contact with the stuff. Some of the pre-processing pulp liquid, meantime, had oozed across the kitchen floor and was heading for the back porch when I came back to get more paper towels.
I cleaned it up and went back to the front porch where the pulp (or the pulpy layers) was oozing through more paper, smoothed the surface--still no air bubbles, it was sort of undulating all together as I worked it, tried to contain it, and decided to leave it alone.
In the kitchen, there was still some slime and it had oozed all around the sink. It was totally clear and looked like water. But as fluid and thin as it was, like water, it kept oozing. I went through a couple of rolls of paper towels.
I left a voice mail for the papermaking supply company asking what Percol IS, but they haven't gotten back to me (probably calling their attorney, alarmed by the way I sounded).
A little research revealed that I had way overdone the Percol; in industrial papermaking, one pound is added to a ton of pulp. At $6.25 for four ounces of powder, whatever is the right amount for papier mache is obviously very cheap.
It's not toxic. Described as a flocculant, it seems to do something to liquid surface tension. The most interesting use I discovered was a theoretical military paper about "de-tractioning"--or using nontoxic substances to make surfaces very slippery.
After battling the slime--and it's oozed into some really obscure corners of the kitchen--I'm way too tired to work through the chemistry, but its benefit for papier mache seems to be either pulling water into the paper or making the paste permeate better. I think if it's used right, it could make layering smoother, faster, and far less wrinkly.
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It sounds like scenes from that movie "The Blob!" Do you think the stuff will dry properly? I had the opposite experience today. I put the first coat of paper (strips for the first coat) on my latest cat and the mixture turned out wet and sloppy. I never measure anything - much like my cooking. It was a little difficult getting it to stick to the armature (a mass of newspapers shaped with tape and reinforced with shish kabob sticks), but eventually it went together and it seems to be drying okay in front of the pellet stove. I always get a different perspective after I start to get the paper on and this poor kitty is going to require some sculpting with a utility knife. He looks like he's got the gout. 
I'll have to investigate the gallery feature on this site and start posting photos.
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Vinca, it probably wasn't that dramatic, but it might have been stranger. The liquid from the paper shreds that had the Percol looked like water and was only a little thicker than water. It couldn't have been more than 1 cup of it--at the outside--that oozed over the kitchen counter, onto the floor, and kept spreading.
I also wondered about drying. After cleaning up the clear slime in the kitchen, I didn't even want to look at the front porch and the paper-covered pulp. But this morning, it was all mostly dried, probably even more quickly than it would have.
Before I did the research last night, I was thinking it might act something like detergent, which makes water more liquid by changing the surface tension. I did find out that Percol affects ion charging--some is cationically charged, and some anionically charged. I am wondering if dishwasher 'drying agents' work on a similiar principle, or are even a related chemical, because they're supposed to make the water 'sheet' evenly.
I added a tiny amount today to paste for strips--less than 1/8th teaspoon, and unless its a placebo, it seemed to make an enormous difference, but describing the effect is hard. It was like the paste was greased; it spread over the paper much faster, and more thoroughly, and the strips were much slicker. It didn't seem to affect the drying time but I think the result was smoother.
The wierd thing (well, one of them) was that the sheets I kept tossing on top of the super-charged pulp last night had sort of smoothed themselves out and bonded together. I think it changes the osmosis of water through the paper, and even with the very dilute amount I used with the strips today pasting from the top worked almost as fast as pasting from the bottom usually does. The supercharged pulp was sort of traveling through the paper covering it but not dissolving it.
One of the reasons the paper industry uses it is that it specifically enables paper pulp to absorb and hold larger amounts of calcium carbonate, in addition to pigments and other additives, thus making acid-free wood-based paper much easier to make. Some research papers seem to suggest that adding calcium carbonate to pulp would be extremely difficult without Percol or something like it. It works on the cellular/molecular level, so it isn't a coating.
So it isn't really surprising it should have at least some effect on paper sheets and pulped paper shreds. My provisional thought is that it has such a beneficial effect on mache work, at such a low cost, that I can't believe it hasn't made the leap from papermaking and it hardly seems likely that I'm the first person to have used it. (It's not as if I discovered through a bizarre combination of circiumstances that baked aspirin or something completely unrelated helped.)
I'm going to see if dishwasher drying agent is related, although that would be a very expensive, very diluted form compared to the powder (athough still cheap; I'd guess the equivalent dose would be a teaspoon or so.) Meanwhile if anyone's interested, I got mine from Carriage House papermaking, in NY, which has a web store. It's made by CIBA, which manufactures at least eight varieties, and it's possible that a local CIBA rep or distributor could snag someone a couple of ounces (at an oz. per 140 pounds of PAPER pulp without water, it clearly goes further than almost anything I can imagine) if you claimed your kid was doing a science project.
(I just realized why its called Percol, what flocculent means, and why its also used in the mine wastage, pig waste slurry, and sewage treatment processes. I hadn't put it all together until just now, though I figured flocculent had something to do with bubbles. It helps all those things percolate through filters!)
Meanwhile, if anybody wants to try it, I've got enough to give spoonfuls to at least 10 people and will be happy to if you get me a stamped addressed envelope and one of those small sealable plastic envelopes beads and such come in. Anybody who's interested can send me a note.
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I'm probably just being a paranoid American, but I'd think twice about sending white powdered anything around the world. You might have Agent Mike at the door and find out your phone is tapped. I might order some of the stuff from that company, though. It's certainly cheap enough.
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Vinca, the same thought occured to me, but I thought if I labeled it clearly and enclosed a printout of suggestions about how to use it, the storm troopers wouldn't bother. (Also I keep forgetting this is a UK forum because they've been so tolerant about us US eccentrics.)
Anyway, I don't mind putting my name and address on it--Wisconsin is extremely sensible in general, it's a paper center in specific, our police station is down the block and very nice--though I certainly understand any recipient's concern.
I have discovered more amazing properties (I think) and am starting a new topic because to know for sure I've got a couple of questions and I can possibly reach a larger audience than the hardy followers of the slime story..
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You have a private message! (such a surprise...)
Sue
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