Jonathan

The next morning, Jonathan touched the felt and he realized that it was still slightly wet, especially the lower sitting pieces.

He took the three driest pieces of paper, with their felt, carefully from the top and then lied them out. While he managed to carefully remove them from each other, they seemed to need help to stay stable, so he let them attached to one piece of felt.

He waited until the others where there and then showed them the finished pieces of paper. These were not usable, because they disintegrated as soon as one tried to remove them from the felt. They were only lightly attached to the felt, so this was not the problem, but the paper was internally really weak attached to itself.

“We need something to increase the bounds. The slightly brown colour is usable, but this small problem there, with it breaking apart as soon as you just look at it the wrong way, is not. Does anyone have any ideas to fight this problem? Please keep in mind that I am pretty sure that everything else worked, for the most part. Lignum, I need something from you, please follow me.”

After he walked for a few meters, he turned around and gestured Lignum to stop. Then he sat down on the grass.

The carpenter followed his actions and asked: “What do you need from me?”

Jonathan sighed: “I have realized that we might need more pressure. It will not alleviate the problem we have right now, but it will ease a few things and might prevent other problems. I want a press that we can use to press the water out of our pieces of paper. Besides this, it might be useful to think of something we can use to reduce the amount of work we put into preparing the feedstock. For the first step I see no real alternative, but for the second one, I see the possibility to automate it. It is a really uncomplicated movement, so it should be possible to simulate it. For that, we would need power. Do you know if water wheels are used somewhere near here?”

Lignum thought for a moment: “Building a press or buying one and then modifying it should not be too difficult, especially considering the budget the king gave us. I think there are some water wheels used upstream in this direction, still in the bounds of Theron’s borders, but they only rotate, how is that useful?”

“Gears can do many things, believe me. It will not be easy, and I know almost nothing about it, but I think we should be able to get it done. Let’s keep that in mind, for after we have a working recipe. Also, if you buy a press, please buy a second one at the same time, after we got that done, I will be so happy, we will need it, believe me.”

Lignum accepted the task and was on his way.

After this, Jonathan reconvened with Atramento and Aurum: “I sent Mr Lignum out to buy us a press to help with the last step. Does anyone of you two have any ideas already?”

Marcus Aurum answered: “No, we have no ideas already. I think best if I have something to do. Do you need anything done, for the future? There must be a reason why you requested me, and it was not the sieves. What was it?”

Jonathan sighed and answered: “Letters. They should be sized as letters are normally sized, maybe a bit bigger, but not by much. But the really difficult part is that they need to be made wrong in a really specific way. Here, let me explain what we want to do with the letters, which should be made out of lead or an alloy with lead as its main ingredient. We will use the letters by painting them with ink, lying a piece of paper on them, and then pressing down with the help of a press. After that, we will take the pressure away, take the paper away and then let the paper dry. The letters can be reused again and again. Did you understand what is needed of you?”

“I think so. I need letters which go in a way that they will appear correct when applied to the paper.”

“Yes, exactly,” Jonathan answered excitedly: “Also before I forget, the letters should all have the same size or a really similar size. For the beginning, it will be enough to do the entire alpha…” Jonathan paused. He forgot a vital piece of information, then he continued: “Atramento, how many letters does your alphabet have?”

Atramento answered almost instantly: “107, why?”

“Ok, that is not too bad. The alphabet I am used to has 26 to 52 if you count in a certain way. Might even be higher if you factor in regional irregularities. That reminds me, do you have capital letters?”

“Yes, but not every letter has a capital letter equivalent.”

“Great. So that amount of letters is usable. Aurum, please work with Atramento to manage this task, and please test the letters in some way before making them. Also, consider mass production. We will need multiple complete sets in the end, even if we will not need the same amount of every letter. In my native language, there is a small group of letters that come up in disproportionate amounts.”

Aurum and Atramento got on with their tasks, while Jonathan began to think about what they could use to keep the paper together. Maybe a glue was the answer? He would discuss that idea latter with the others.

Later that day, they sat together and discussed how their day went, as well as the ideas they had to alleviate the problem with the papermaking process.

All of them thought glue or something similar was the way to go.

Jonathan summarized: “We need a glue. It should dissolve in water, but it should also be able to keep its properties, at least after the water had been dried off. So the glue should be based on water. Does anyone have ideas where we find a glue like that?”

Lignum raised his hand and answered: “Carpenters like I use water-based glue. And better yet, it is for wood or similar things. It should work for clothes as well, I think.”

“You might be right, I think I remember that this kind of glue was also used for the making of cloth armour in my world,” Jonathan answered: “We will need to test out different kinds of glue and also the dosage, but I hope, no, think we have a solution.”

A week later, after multiple fails or substandard produce, they finally had paper. The press that Timothy Lignum had bought certainly speed up the process and made that final product a bit better, as well. Jonathan looked at the slightly discoloured piece, which had some welts in it as if it were perfect. And for now, it was.