Gabe15

with some help from a post made by the lorax awhile ago, and some improvisation, my banana paper turned out all right! for the first batch at least... its a bit uneven in spots, but i hope to get better with successive batches.

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harveyc

Was an innocent Siam Ruby killed in the process of this experiment????

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Gabe15

haha, no, i wouldn't do that. it was a left over pseudostem from my TC experiments.

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paradisi

interesting

so how do you make the banana paper???

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Gabe15

i cut up the pseudostem into about 1cm long sections and pressure cooked them for about 30min (easier than boiling but seemed to be effective). i put them into the blender and they all quickly turned into a fine pulp, i poured the pulp on a screen and tried to get it as even as possible, then i placed a piece of foil over it and a board with some bricks on top to flatten it as it dried. it was a light brown, but since i was in experimental mode, i bleached it which made it a lot lighter, and it stayed strong enough to run thru water and get out most of the bleach after it lightened up. i then put it in the toaster oven with a tray over it to quickly dry it out again. this is just a little piece, about 5in across, but its all i had since i was just using a little pseudostem. im actually surprised at how strong it is, it feels like a decent heavy piece of craft paper. next time i want to try to make a big sheet.

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hersirsmiley

does it have to be psuedostem or could you use the leaves as well. if you could use most of the plant to make paper you could create a paper industry in south america and other nations that have banana crops growing. think of the benefits for poor families that could sell their paper or at least have their own paper for use in education or for letters!

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Gabe15

Im not sure how well the leaves work, my guess would be they work fine, especially mixed in with pseudostem fiber. Im hoping to try out lots of different things as I get better at it.

And I am getting better at it! On my third run of this I seem to have created something that could pass as a real piece of paper.

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austinl01

Wow, Gabe. That sure does look like a real sheet of paper. Great job!

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Arkansas River Valley

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momoese

Nice progress!

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Mitchel

CookieCows

Now this is really cool!

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buzzwinder

Gabe That is really neat, about how long from start to finnish does it take, I'ld like to give it a try with my childrens help but they have an attension span smaller than a ( well thats another story for a another time )

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Bill

harveyc

Looks good! What changes did you make to improve the quality of the paper?

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Taylor

This would be the ABSOLUTE BEST thing you could do with a pseudostem of a plant after you have harvested the fruit. Or else you end up 'wasting' a lot of stem in terms of paper production.

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Taylor

Update:
23 California Gold fruit expected by Thanksgiving!

mskitty38583

gabe that is great!!!! market it to the nana org and ill buy some!

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island cassie

That is so cool and looks good fun - thanks for sharing the process!!

Cassie (soon to have spare p-stem!!)

Gabe15

Mainly in the drying process. I went out and got a screen and built a frame to use, as opposed to a mesh metal trash bin I used for the first one. Also, I come up with some different ways to get the pulp much more thin and even before it dried. I'm not sure on the best or easiest way to do any of this, seeing as I've only done it 3 times so far I'll keep on improving it until I can get something consistently high quality and easy (or just easy to replicate) to produce. So far, I have just improvised and messed around with different ideas and tools until I found the results I was looking for, but I'm sure I'll find some efficient ways to keep it even thickness and thin (which seem to be the 2 hardest things to do, but with the right technique become easy).

It took me about 45min from harvesting raw material to pouring the pulp on the rack, but the drying process can take all day or more. Making the pulp from the plant is the easiest thing to do, but making it into paper takes a bit more concentration.

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Gabe15

I also want to look into how acidic this paper is, and if needed (and easily possible), correct it.

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jpfloors

I think it'd be fun to try doing this sometime!!!

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Gabe15

This product has been around a long time (various paper companies already make use of the agricultural waste from banana plantations), and it was really the lorax that wrote down the basic instructions and gave me the idea to try it myself, so thank her too!