Making Paper - Photo of Cotton Slurry

This is a photo of the slurry just before it enters the paper machine. This particular photo taken at Esleeck Manufacturing in western Massachusetts shows the cotton slurry made from recycled cotton fabric (old hospital bedsheets and denim blue jeans?) which have been made into a cotton soup, called slurry, and bleached. This slurry will enter the paper making machine in a few minutes. As it moves through the machine the water drains out through a wire mesh. As the water drains away the cotton fibers in the slurry align themselves so as to bind together. This paper machine is about 100 yards long. By the time the slurry-turned-to-paper passes through dozens of rollers from the beginning of the machine to the end the water has all drained away and the paper is trimmed and put on a roll which has a 40 inch length, about four feet in diameter and weighs about a ton.



Supersize this image: Esleeck Paper Slurry