394 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 195 7 



wider range of bamboo species is employed as a source of pulp. In 

 fact, it is probable that any local species in sufficient abimdance and 

 available at a reasonable price may be used. For making some of the 

 very coarse dark papers of common use for filters, wrappings, etc., 

 mature stems are acceptable. The tips of the mature clums, a by- 

 product of the split-bamboo industry, are so employed in southeastern 

 Asia. The time allowed for digestion is very long, often a full year, 

 and the pulping methods are not highly refined. 



In the construction of the comriion type of mold, on which the finest 

 paper is still made by hand in the Orient, bamboo is always used. 

 The essential part of the mold is a flexible screen of slender wirelike 

 units fastened together in parallel array by means of hair, silk, or 

 ramie. The best screens are made from the peripheral wood of large 

 culms of Phyllostachys pubescens or P. tambusoides. After pre- 

 liminary splitting, the strips are reduced to the desired size and to a 

 cylindrical form by being pulled through a hole in a piece of steel, 

 after the manner of wire drawing. In this way wirelike strips of 

 marvelous uniformity and fineness may be produced. Some screens 

 have as many as 32 strips to the inch. The finished screens, after 

 having been treated with lacquer, are objects of great beauty and 

 unbelievable durability. The binding fibers, which correspond to the 

 warp in weaving, are the first part of the screen to wear out. When a 

 screen has been in use many years and can no longer be repaired, the 

 bamboo strips are salvaged and reworked into a new screen. 



Bamboo finds numerous other more or less incidental uses in the 

 average Oriental mill where paper is made by hand. The half-stuff 

 is carried from the digesting vat to the bamboo treading trough in 

 bamboo baskets suspended from a bamboo pole. The finished pulp is 

 "combed" by means of a bamboo loop to remove coarse fibers ("shives") 

 which have escaped reduction by digesting and treading. Upon 

 addition of water, after it has reached the dipping vat, the pulp is 

 agitated by means of a bamboo stirring rod to eifect an even dis- 

 persal of the fibers. The vatman and the drier work by the light of 

 a bamboo lamp at night. Bamboo rope is used on the windlass for 

 applying force to the press. Bamboo forceps are used to pick up the 

 corners of the wet sheets from the block as it comes from the press. 

 Old bamboo culms that are too highly lignified to make pulp by hand 

 methods are commonly used as fuel for drying the paper. The bales 

 of finished paper are often covered with bamboo culm sheaths and 

 bound with bamboo bands. A bamboo tool, combining the functions 

 of a gauge and an awl, is used to space the bands upon the bales and 

 tuck in the twisted ends. 



The principal technical problems arising in connection with the 

 use of bamboo for paper pulp in modern mills have been solved, and 



