Le Moulin du Got

PAPER MAKING

This is where paper has been made since the beginning of the Mill’s activity. Some changes were made towards 1865 to convert to straw paper and since has remained a pre-industrial installation with the machines and layout of that time. The three products made in the Mill needed different machinery.

For rag paper: hammers, boiler, frames and presses
For straw paper: straw choppers, vats, millstones, Dutch beaters, paper machine, press
For rolled cardboard: millstones, Dutch beaters, paper machine, and press.

In 1865, new techniques led to the disappearance of the equipment used to make rag- paper by hand. The Moulin du Got had up to 9 stamping troughs with 3 hammers each, in two groups. Each group was connected to a bucket–wheel by a shaft and cams that drove the hammers. At the bottom of the stairs you can see a model, (to a scale of about ¼) of one of these troughs and hammers. The production of “straw” paper, which started in about 1865, required some new equipment, a “straw chopper” and three “vats” where the straw was soaked for ten to fifteen days in a lime-wash before it was “crushed” under the millstones. In the present layout a single vat (converted into a strainer) can be seen beside the staircase.

The Millstones.

These millstones were installed in about 1865. The granite stones crushed the raw materials, and transformed them into a coarse paste. This was used to make straw paper, and, later, rolled cardboard made from re-cycled paper. The paste was carried from the millstones to the beaters by a truck that ran on rails.

Dutch Beaters.

This machine owes its name to its inventor’s nationality. It was brought to the mill in 1865 to “refine” the straw paste. The Dutch Beater consists of an oval tub measuring about 1 m3, a cylinder, fitted with cutting blades, and a bedplate, also fitted with blades. As the cylinder turned the paste was drawn into a continuous circular movement. A “steering wheel” controlled the space between the cylinder and the plate. It can process different materials: straw paste, recycled paper paste, and at the present time rag paste. This invention reduced the time needed to “refine” paste from 36 hours to 2 hours.

The Paper Machine.

Invented by Nicolas Robert at the end of C18, and developed in two versions: a flat table, and a round form (1809). The machine seen here was installed in the mill about 1875. It was taken to pieces for restoration and put back in place in 2002. In this mill it was used to make “straw paper”.“The paper left the machine in a continuous sheet, and while damp was rolled over a slatted drum, then spread on the table and cut with a trimmer to the required size.”

Following that period, rolled cardboard:

“The paper was rolled around the cylinder until the required thickness was obtained, then cut and removed by the operator.”

The rate of production by this machine was a vast improvement on the hand-made procedure, and could turn out cardboard at 50 to 60 kilos per hour in 1954, (18 meters per minute) compared to 50 kilos per day by hand.

The Vat.

This is the historic basis of hand made papermaking, unchanged for four centuries in the Moulin du Got (and used by the Chinese two centuries B.C). Once it was made of copper circled with iron, like a barrel. The one you see here is of stainless steel. In the old days the paste prepared in the stamping trough was diluted in the vat and kept at a temperature of 25°C by a charcoal fire. Nowadays the paste comes directly from the Dutch beaters where it is already at 25°C.

The Hydraulic Press.

100 sheets of paper or cardboard, with 101 separating felts, are compacted to extract as much water as possible, reducing the thickness of the sheets of paper by about half.

Drying.

The sheets of paper or cardboard are then separated from the felts and dried in a room not yet open to the public.

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