Washi production and Technique: Knives

和紙原料収穫専用鎌　A special sickle for paper plant harvesting — The left one is a special sickle for paper plant harvesting.

蒸し剥ぎや煮熟に使うカマド　Fire place for steaming and boiling. — Fire place for steaming and boiling.

ヘグル用包丁　a knife for scraping outer part of the bark — A knife for scraping outer part of the bark.

Scraping off the outer part of the bark

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About this blog series
“The message from traditional Japanese paper“

Several type of knives are used in traditional Japanese paper. We use different knives for each tasks, cutting the plant, pruning the cut branch, and making them in same length.

A special sickle with a short blade are used when cutting the plant. And for pruning the side branch, we use an ordinary sickle. We should be careful not to damage the bark of the main tree which become material.

We use “press cutter” to cut the bundles of branches into 110cm. This length is best to handle the bark later on in the process. And we use the left over branches for fire wood so the length also fits to the fire place.

There are two kind of knives we use to clean the stripped off bark. One of them is more or less similar to a kitchen knife for scraping off the two outer layers.

As you can see in the video, the skin of the raw material is divided into three layers from the outside to the inside: black, green, and white. This way you clean the bark determines the kind of paper you are making.

After that the raw materials are reviewed once again before boiling, to remove small scratches and black skins that are inappropriate for the paper you want to make. Another special knife is used in this case.