Frank Romano:   So now we’re seeing a young man with his first experience at making paper.  So in that water is what?

Melinda:  This is cotton fiber.

Frank Romano:  And you have already mashed it down in some way.

Melinda:  Yeah, I've used **** in order to take their rags and turn them into pulp, so to separate the fibers and to make it into something that will cause hydrolic.

Frank Romano:  So now he is pulling up the screen, so the water is now draining out and what remains is the fiber from the paper.

Timmy:  I have a big chunk of it.

Melinda:  It’s okay.

Frank Romano:  It looks a little lumpy there.

Melinda:  Yeah, we’ll mix it up more Timmy.

Frank Romano:  Three-dimensional paper.  You know there could be a market for that.

Melinda:  There you go.  That’s it.  Yeah, that’s good.  That's it, yeah.  There you go.  Now you can take the deckle off.  It’s mostly drained, so.

Frank Romano:  So we just put it down on what kind of material?

Melinda:  This is felt, so it’s really absorbent.  It’s going to pull as much water out as possible.  Yeah, it’s mostly coming off, so you can grab, there you go.  Perfect.

Frank Romano:  How old are you by the way?

Timmy:  I'll be 11.

Frank Romano:  Wow and so we now have an 11 year-old make paper.  Wow, imagine what you’ll do at 12.  World peace, I can see it now.

Timmy: It might be kind of green after this.  

Melinda:  That’s fine.

Frank Romano:  You have paper growing between your fingers.  And this is how paper was originally made.  They had bigger vats of course.

Melinda:  Yeah, bigger vats and they would use moulds like this.

Frank Romano:  And the screen determines the pattern, whether it’s laid paper or-

Melinda:  Yeah, so this is a laid mould and then we have a wove mould.

Frank Romano:  This is fantastic.  Of course at the beginning this mixture was mostly linen rag.

Melinda:  Yeah, linen rags, although they are harder to find.  We try.  If anyone has any linen rags they can send them to the Boston Paper Collective.

Frank Romano:  That would be great.  So thank you very much Melinda.