PAPER FROM RAGS 19
boiling, but it yields a strong and tough half stuff suitable for making strong
thin papers.
Hose canvas, both cotton and linen, is obtained from the dockyards and
from municipal authorities. It is clean, usually almost new and little used,
and nowadays rarely contains rubber as insertion. It is cut up into short strips
before boiling, and gives a strong clean half stuff of excellent colour.
Cotton tentage yields a useful strong half stuff of good colour. It is fairly
reliable in quality and contains few contraries beyond metal hooks and eyes.
It is usually clean and white, although it is sometimes covered with water
paint, which is easily removed. It requires a comparatively small amount of
caustic soda, not very drastic boiling, and gives a strong white half stuff.
Linen canvas consists of a mixture of all kinds of linen from post office
bags to tarpaulins and sailors' hammocks. It is usually greasy and contains
varying amounts of shive, to remove which it requires a large percentage of
caustic soda and prolonged boiling.
It gives a 'greasy' and easily fibrillated half stuff, which cannot be bleached
to such a white colour as cotton canvas.
Cotton canvas is packed in various grades from No. i downwards. The
best grades are white, clean and free from contraries. They do not require
such severe treatment as linen canvas, and they produce a pure and white
half stuff, which gives hardness and strength to the paper* They contain a
good percentage of fairly new canvas. The lower grades contain all manner
of coloured pieces, from 'Willesden' green to brown tanned, and they are
always dirty, covered with paint, soot, tar and grease. They contain metal
hooks and eyes, buckles and rings.
This material is very difficult to sort, as it is always questionable what to
throw out and what to leave in, owing to the uncertainty of the action of the
lime, caustic soda, etc., on the various substances coating the canvas. It is
always best to throw out anything about which a doubt exists—at least until
a test has been made in the laboratory—as it is most annoying, and indeed
wasteful, to have a whole boiling spoilt by allowing a few pieces of stuff to
pass when there is any question as to its suitability.
One of the worst evils of this material, and one of the most difficult to
detect, is rubber, either sewn or woven into the canvas, or coated on to it in
the form of waterproofing solution, and many a good boiling has been spoilt
by this troublesome bugbear of the paper-maker.
Hemp, manilla, jute ropes and bagging are used in the manufacture, both
of the highest and purest, and also of die lowest grades of paper.
Ropes and bagging are used for making wrappers. Hemp and manifia
ropes come to the mill in thicknesses varying from quite thin rope to