Day 5 Sunday Week 2:
Drying the Paper
The paper is dried on boards. These improve with age and the finished sheets of paper will show the pattern of the wood grain.
| The wet and fragile sheets are rolled gently but firmly onto the boards. |  |
 | Then the Boards are spread outside in the sun to dry. Cool sunny weather provides the best drying conditions for paper. Very hot weather will yield limp paper. |
| In this image you can see how the paper is conforming to the raised woodgrain in the old drying board. |  |
 | This sheet is dry and ready to be peeled from the board. |
Conclusion
This workshop was a window on a traditional and labour intensive discipline which may disappear in our lifetime. Or like other crafts, Paper making may experience a renaissance in a world starved for satisfaction and meaning in manual labour. Two excellent resources are:
Japanese Papermaking Traditions, Tools, and Techniques by Timothy Barrett, New York, Weatherhill c.1983
Papermaking the History and Technique of an Ancient Craft by Dard Hunter, New York, Dover Publications c. 1943, 1947 A. Knopf
