CHAPTER V
FINISHING
Papers which have reached the stage described in Chapters III. and IV. still have much to be done to them before the consumer, stationer, or printer can receive them. Finishing varies with different papers. Hand-made paper requires sizing, drying, glazing, sorting, counting (sometimes cutting), and packing before it is ready for despatch. If the machine-made paper is for writing, it may be gelatine sized, followed by drying, re-reeling, glazing, cutting into sheets, sorting, counting, and packing into reams. Printing papers are finished with "machine" or with super-calender or water finish, and other papers with friction-glazed or flint-glazed surfaces, the other operations following as for other papers after glazing.
Tub sizing always means animal sizing. Some mills still prepare their gelatine from hide cuttings, parchment cuttings, and other materials which yield gelatine, but the tendency is to eliminate this process and to buy the gelatine in sheet form ready for use without any process other than reduction to a solution of such strength as is necessary. The tub or vat of size is prepared and kept at an even temperature, the paper is dipped or allowed to stand in the size, or there are machines which carry the paper slowly through the trough of gelatine. The size must permeate the paper in order to make the sizing effective. On emerging, the paper
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