joining sheets of washi

materials

• shin shofu or pure wheat starch as paste
  • soak it 5:1
• don't have metal in contact with your paste!
• normally sieve paste twice
• noriban - made of cedar
• horse hair sieve
• shigoki, good multi-purpose brush
• 500 gbp pounding brush, lol
• burnishing beads
• there's a special paper cutting knife thing, very curved blade

aligning the papers

make sure to align same grain direction and same size.

when joining 4 sheets (e.g. 2x2 sheet), avoid 4 sheets being overlapped at the same time, instead, offset the join (in the image below, ▀ is where the paste is, so note that at most there is only 3 sheets overlapping – this is to reduce areas of stiffness in the joined sheets).

┌─────────────────┐ 
│                 │ 
│                 │ 
│               ┌─┼───────────────┐
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
├───────────────┼▀┤               │
│▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀│▀│               │
├───────────────┼▀┤               │
│               ├▀────────────────┤
│               │▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀│
│               ├▀┼───────────────┤
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
│               │▀│               │
└───────────────┼─┘               │
                │                 │
                │                 │
                └─────────────────┘

one technique for setting the edges is to fold the paper in half and then place two awl punches in the loose corners once folded. you can then use those to make a straight line – this is done on the stack of papers, so it allows you to square all of the sheets to each other (rather than being objectively geometrically square).

the actual pasting

1. create a stack of you papers, and slightly offset (sort of like when tipping on two endsheets at once) so that there is a few millimeters of overlap on the sheets
2. apply paste
3. drag the top sheet out away from stack
4. drag 2nd sheet and overlay precisely on the pasted part (might be safer to do slightly less than the pasted part?)
5. pound slightly with stiff-bristled brush to work the fibers into each other, incorporating the paste
6. repeat for all sheets

avoid overly wet paste!

alternatives

there is also a method involving tearing the edges (score with a straight edge, wet with a brush, and then tear, finally, brush fibers outwards, so they will be overlapping when pasted - repeat on both sides). only has minimal overlapping.

references

these notes are mostly taken from from Jane Colbourne - Techniques of Joining Together Sheets of Japanese Paper - 18 July 2013

last updated: 2022-10-14 23:20:41