Recycling: From organic waste to handmade paper

[mdsaad31 (Saad Shaikh)]

Nature’s Gift: Transforming Corn Husks into Beautiful Paper:

We created handmade paper from corn husks as an act of recycling, started by collecting and drying the husks. Once they were dry, we soaked them in a container of water for a day to soften them.

12 Jan 24, LA.Day 1, Cleaned the corn husk.

Soaking them in a container of water for 24 hours to soften them.

Day 2
Next, twe boiled soaked corn husk with caustic soda to digest almost everything except cellulose fibers.

After two hours of boiling we get the pulp.

This pulp is now ready for spreading it as a sheet / paper.

Making a wooden frame with a metal mesh

We made a rectangular frame using the reusuable wood available in the makerspace. We fixed a metal mesh to size and fixed it to the frame with staples. Such is frame is called deckle.

We mixed pulp clean water in a tray, large enough to dip and move the deckle. Once the pulp is evenly spread on the deckle as a thin film, we lift to drain the excess water. Then we transfer the evenly distributed pulp on a dry cloth. We used cloth to blot excess water and left for air drying overnight.

Finishing: Once the paper is completely dry, it can be trimmed using a paper cutter or scissors to the desired shape or size. The quality of the paper depends on factors like fiber consistency, pressing technique, and drying conditions. With more practice, we will be able to get a good-quality, usable paper.

That’s it! We can also decorate the paper however we like. By following these steps, you can also create beautiful handmade paper from corn husk.

[Swati1 (Swati)]

Could you elaborate the process of making a deckle?

I might try making paper at home this monsoon

[GN (Nagarjuna G)]

We had several such frames at Living Academy because we used such frames to reduce the amount of wood used in our wooden cabinets and storage boxes.

It is like a rectangular frame. We have cut two strips of an 18" plyboard, about one feed long and one inch wide. We can make a large piece of paper if you take a longer strip. Our size is contained by the tray we have. The tray must be larger than the frame size, while spreading the pulp on the mesh.

To make the rectangular frame, we cut the edges of the strips at 45° and joined them at 90°, using wood adhesive (like Fevicol) and a heavy stapler at the corners to hold the strips tight.

We used metal mesh (readily available from the local hardware store) to cover the windows to prevent mosquitoes and stapled it tightly to the frame. You may also use plastic mesh.

That’s as simple as that.

Follow many videos online, e.g:

Papertrails - A documentary on Kagzipura Handmade Paper

[KiranKalakotiR (Kiran Kalakoti)]

@mdsaad31

boiled soaked corn husk with caustic soda

Would it be possible for you to share how much caustic soda you used in the water?..

> What is the amount of caustic soda used in the water?
What is the role of caustic soda?.

[KiranKalakotiR (Kiran Kalakoti)]

@mdsaad31

Once they were dry,

How were these corn husks dried? Could you suggest another alternative to sun drying?

[GN (Nagarjuna G)]

@sahamatha is the best person to guide on this. But the video listed above also mentions some details.

I think the boiling in caustic soda digests all other organic matter except the hard fibers and cellulose, the pulp.

[kvk (Vinod Kumar K)]

Your work uses corn husk as the raw material for making paper. The paper industry uses soft fast growing wood. Similarly fibres are made from wood, sugarcane waste etc. There was a company Gwalior Rayons in Kozhikode that made rayon fibres from bamboo. After all the bamboo have been cut away and exhausted the factory closed.

Can we make writable paper from banana leaf? instead of trying the industrial sodium hydroxide process to get the cellulose and then sticking together the cellulose to make the paper (or wood) let us find a chemical or photochemical or electrochemical process to remove the sticky and fillers from the paper structure already in the banana leaf. This will give us a banana paper!

[GN (Nagarjuna G)]

Good idea!

A dried Banana leaf may not have enough strength due to loose packing. But we can try.

To gain strength, I am guessing that we could stack two or three dried leaf layers in a crisscross pattern. We need to find a good natural glue to bind the layers.

[jtd (Jude T Dsouza)]

In Mangalore the outer bark is used to make string.
The bark is stripped off the tree and sun dried for a few days.
The bark now looks like wrinkled mesh with long vertical thread like strips.
Pulling at one of the threads frees it from the bark.
It was used to weave garlands and gajras.

It can also be spun into thread and woven into cloth - experiment for charkha.

[kvk (Vinod Kumar K)]

outer bark of banana?

[GN (Nagarjuna G)]

The Banana has a false stem. Maybe @jtd meant the the sheath of the leaves.

[jtd (Jude T Dsouza)]

I meant the trunk of the banana plant.