Eugene Robkin (erobkin@uwc.edu)
Mon, 08 Mar 1999 14:33:47 -0600
Hello all:
As Jewelia noted, making pulp with household blenders does indeed generate
lots of smoke and use up piles of machines. If you can locate one, Waring
makes industrial scale blenders that will make paper scrap into a form of
pulp. It is not as good as beater pulp by a long shot but it does make paper.
I have a couple of these giant blenders and I make pulp for my wife to use
in her elementary school art classes when she teaches paper making. We
usually repulp old file folders and make several gallons of concentrated
pulp each year. Sulphite based office paper scrap makes nearly useless
muck instead of pulp. I am reasonably confident that you could work with
the half-stuff Jewelia mentioned. You CANNOT pulp rag chunks with one.
The physical process is wrong and you will likely destroy the blender. If
you can still find old IBM punched cards to repulp then you've got very
high quality paper scrap to use. My sources for these dried up years ago
but they worked great.
The blender containers are over a gallon in capacity and the motor bases
are at least a half horesepower and maybe more. They trip the circuit
breakers in the house sometimes. And they are loud and messy to use. I
think you could liquify a whole (unfrozen) chicken in one without straining
it.
These giant blender things are out of sight expensive when new but I find
them from my surplus sources around once every 5 to 7 years. The last time
I repaired one, several years ago, parts were still available for almost
every model ever made.
If you haunt surplus sources look around for one. They are great tools if
you want to play with reprocessing paper pulp. Find a real commercial
kitchen supplier and go look at one so you will know what you are looking
for and don't look at the price unless you are immune to sticker shock. Of
course if you've got the resources feel free to buy one new.
Regards,
ER
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat Nov 06 1999 - 10:09:02