After a week of tinkering with Karsh and the weaver, I've made a few meshes to attempt to strain the water from wood pulp, and then to attempt a drying process. I'm still lacking felt to layer between pulp sheets, but for now, I'll try placing them on wooden boards, then I'll press the boards to try to squeeze some water out and form the paper better. Without the felt though, they still might end up too moist. I won't lose hope if it doesn't work however, it just means I'll need to wait until we can try our hand at making felt this summer when the bargas' fur is ready to sheer.
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I had mixed results over the course of nine days with making paper. On one hand, I did manage to make some of the paper work, but it's pretty low quality. Without the felt to help wick water from the pulp, only the thinner frames ended up successfully drying. Unfortunately, that paper was too thin to be useful for writing or storing information long term. However, since I at least had some successes, I can do some further experiments with the paper that I can make to try to improve it's color and strength. The results might not map perfectly onto thicker sheets, but it should at least give me insight into what is or isn't a good idea.
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I've been tinkering with paper additives for twenty-two days now, and I've come up with two things that seem to help with paper quality. First, I've found that I get better quality paper by steaming and chipping the wood before pulping it. I'm not sure if it's because it softens the wood and makes it easier to grind, or if there is some chemical process going on. The second thing is adding a small amount of powdered seashells into the pulp water. This lightens the final paper color somewhat, and also seems to help make the paper more durable.
The next step to this process is seeing how the paper holds up over time. It's no good if the paper rots away or deteriorates in a short period of time. With that in mind, I've made multiple sheets of the best paper I can make right now, and I've stored them in different environments to see how long they last. In the meantime, I'll need to find something new to pass the time. It might be worth me doing some expeditionary mining.
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I'm definitely no geologist, and picking good locations for a mine is clearly not in my repertoire. I spent five weeks digging three different mines, and found nothing. The first mine was dug not very far up the mountain beyond the reservoir. I dug there for a while, navigating downward at a slight angle, against the grain of the rocks in the mountain. Unfortunately, after a short while, I realized I'd need to smooth the cave walls to prevent water seepage, which slowed down progress. Using tectonic sense, I was keeping an eye out for any layer changes, and I found one, but the change in layer wasn't actually valuable, going from one shade of dark gray to a slightly lighter one.
The second attempted mine I dug a little higher up, where the slope was a little steeper, there, I still needed to smooth the walls, as water still wanted to seep in, albeit much slower than the lower mine. At least I know that there seems to be plenty of water trapped in the rock here. I got through two layers in the time it took to get through one, but I still didn't find any valuable layers in the expeditionary mine.
The final attempt also yielded no initial results, although it does seem to be the most promising. This mine starts just a few hundred feet shy of the snow line, where the slope of the mountain is quite steep. The natural angle of the mine cuts through layers pretty well, and there are clearly fractures that have been filled by secondary intrusions of lava at some point. Those intrusions are usually where you would find valuable minerals, although I didn't recognize any of the minerals that intruded in these particular instances. If anywhere is going to potentially be mined, this is where we should keep expanding deeper into the mountain.
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I also tried to line up the angle of the main shaft so that my stairwell in the cave higher up might eventually meet down here. That would potentially save me a significant amount of time on that project if cut stone could be hauled down, rather than up. To do that though, I'll need to do some precise measurements to figure out exactly where I am currently in the stair digging process. It's not impossible to do, however. If push comes to shove, I could always make a horizontal hallway to make up the difference if we're off by a bit.
After those five weeks of mining, I checked on the paper and some of it was in pretty rough shape. Any of the paper that was exposed to sunlight had started to yellow and become brittle. Most of the paper was also dealing with high humidity conditions, and although it wasn't decayed quite as much as the sun exposed paper, it also showed signs of weakening condition and had started to warp. I stored one sheet in a vacuum chamber and one smashed between two stone blocks. The vacuum chamber sheet was in pristine condition, and the one that was between the stone blocks was also basically pristine.
The issue with most of the pages seems to be when the broad surface gets exposed to moisture or natural light. Which means if they were in a book, they'd store better, but ideally I'd store them in a lower humidity and stable temperature environment. I could, in theory, store them underground in a room which I keep desiccant to reduce humidity. We actually currently have access to a desiccant in the form of quicklime. When we've been heating crushed seashells to very high temperatures, we're making calcium oxide, which acts as a desiccant and could be regenerated, so in theory, we could make a location for long term book storage. We should probably get books themselves figured out for that first, considering we don't have a binding agent or cover material.
One of those two items we're pretty close to making in the form of leather. After we wiped out the lizards, we didn't have a good source of sturdy hides to make leather from, but with the addition of bargas being farmed on the island, we can probably finalize the leathermaking process soon.
As for glues, I have a few ideas to test for glue making. I'll have to get Karsh to make me a few pots for boiling water in however, as the easiest glues to make come from animal parts. Hides, bones, and even some parts of fish can be useful for making a glue, which again needs quicklime, unfortunately. We're really starting to use a lot of the stuff, which will probably end up lining the pockets of the goblin and those they hire to go collect all the shells that wash up on shore daily. I wouldn't be surprised if they started collecting shells from the beach on the other side of the island just to meet demand for shells in the coming years.
Either way, I'll need to gather up a few different animals of various types, including as many fish species as I can to start experimenting with which parts work best for making glues. I'll then need to treat the various parts, and then boil water to extract the glue material. I don't expect them to be particularly strong materials, which is why picking the best possible choice from among them is important.
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After tinkering for ten days with multiple fishes, other sealife, and groundbirds, I selected the best two options for glues. One comes from an organ from a somewhat rare species of fish, which in any given month the fishersgoblins will see around twenty of. They normally don't bother hunting them, since they have an exceptionally chewy texture and a bland, slightly bitter flavor. Which means I should be able to get at least some of them. After this glue, it's a bit of a drop in quality to the next glue, which is made from the beaks of groundbirds. Since it's quality is worse, and I don't need a bunch of glue right now, I'll only ask for the beaks from the ones that have already been hunted if I'm in need of glue at that time. I still haven't tried any glue made from bargas, which I suspect that either their hooves, bones, or antlers will make a decent glue which is probably better than the groundbird beak glue.
For now, I'll put a standing order in for those rare fish with the fishergoblins, so I can start stockpiling the glue up. It's one nice thing about these glues, when I'm making them, I ultimately make a powder to which I add water to make the glue, so as long as I keep the powder dry, they should have a nearly indefinite shelf life. If things go well with the other projects this year, like felt and paper manufacturing, then I'll probably end up needing to teach a goblin how to make glue as a full time job.