Wood and Paper

[w20046ps1]

Hi. My project involves paper making. Please tell me if my selection of variables and procedures make sense:
I'll be making toilet paper (TP) out of 50% abaca and either 50% softwood or hardwood. The experiment will see if the hybrids will be of comparison to commercial toilet paper. The softwood is Mountain Pine (Pinus). The hardwood is Philippine Mahogany (Shorea Negrosensis). The 3 plant materials mentioned were selected because they're abundant and easy to obtain in the Philippines which is my home country.
Both the softwood-abaca TP and the hardwood-abaca TP set-ups are the experimental set-ups while the commercial toilet paper will be the constant/standard set-up. I'm going to attempt to use the process of making TP using Chinese rice paper making methods, but the process will take a long time, but my project is due on February 2011. This will be a big gamble whether to go onward with this process considering the materials I'll be using are different from the ones Chinese use which is why I need your advice.
Procedure~
1. Fill a bucket with cold water and add 10g of cut abaca fibers (1cm) and shredded pieces of mahogany/pine weighing 10g too. There will be 12 buckets; 6 which has the mixture of softwood and the other 6 having the mixture of hardwood. Soak the 12 buckets for a week in the cold water. When the water turns yellow, empty it and add fresh water. This will bleach the color out of the plant materials, making the paper white.
2. Fill a stainless steel pot with 26 oz. of wood ash and 15 qt. of water.
3. Bring the ash and water solution to a boil and allow it to boil for 30 minutes. This will create a caustic ash solution that will strengthen the paper. After 30 minutes, remove the solution from heat and allow it to settle overnight.
4. Wear protective rubber gloves when working with the caustic wood ash solution. Line a sieve with paper towels or coffee filters and drain the solution into a new stainless steel pot. This will leave you with a solution drained of the ash particles. If you find ash in your solution, drain it again.
5. Repeat to obtain 12 pots of this solution.
6. Add plant material to the caustic solution and fill the pot the rest of the way with water. Boil the solution for three hours; add more water if necessary to keep the solution boiling.
7. Repeat until all 12 buckets of the plant material is cooked.
8. Rinse them in clean, cool water and set them on a flat cutting board. Get rid of the remaining liquor/caustic solution.
9. Pound the cooked batch with a bat against the board or use a mortar and pestle. Continue pounding until the straws form a pulp.
10. Fill a large, plastic container halfway with water. The container must be at least 7 inches deep and at least 2 inches wider than the deckle and mould pieces you will use to make paper.
11. Add the pulp to the container and stir to mix the pulp in with the water. Press your deckle and mould pieces together with the deckle on top. While the water is still circulating from stirring, dip deckle and mould into the container, front edge first.
12. Slowly lift the deckle and mould out of the container and shake it lightly, allowing the straw pulp fibers to settle against the mould. Hold it in place over the container for five minutes so the water drains.
13. Carefully remove the deckle. Gently turn the mould paper-side down onto a layer of blotting paper stacked on top of a layer of newspapers to allow the paper to dry. If you make multiple pieces, stack a layer of newspaper and blotting paper between each sheet.
14. Repeat steps 11 to 13 for the 12 batches of pulp. Don't lose track of its content (whether it is pine of mahogany).
15. Roll a rolling pin over the stack of papers with a rolling pin to push remaining water out of the paper. Allow the paper sheets to dry overnight or longer if necessary.

Do you think I choose the right variables? Is the reason/logic for choosing those certain variables reasonable/sound? Is there any error in the set-ups? Do you think this will work? Is my procedure efficient (ps there are 12 buckets, 6 to each experimental set-up because of a 3 trial requirement for each set-up, but there must be a duplicate so the number of trials must be doubled in case the pulp yield is too low)? What can I do to improve this?

Thank you!

[deleted-71827]

Hi!
I think that your procedure looks pretty good. As always, refer to the ScienceBuddies Project Guide if you have any further questions about any of the steps in your science project:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

As for your variables and how you have chosen them, it is hard to tell whether or not they are reasonable simply based on the fact that these are the types of wood abundant in the Philippines. In order for the variables to be sound, they must be chosen because of a scientific reason (i.e. perhaps you have read before that a similar combination of woods has worked before, and works very well). Hope this helps, good luck!