Paper manufacturing by hand: Shredder

The first step of manufacturing paper by hand is destroying the materials, in this case cotton in the shape of old linen and clothes, to get the fibers the first step. To achieve this they cut the linen and the clothes into strips that they then put in a normal office paper shredder. This shreds the cotton as easily as it shreds paper, and as a result you get a pile of very fine fiber to be used in the manufacturing process. Before they had any sort of shredder they simply hacked away at the materials with an axe to shred it.

Photo and recording by Erik Pålsson, big thanks to Roland at Holmens museum who does this two days a week on his free time.