| Abstract: | Summaries. The leaf-casting process offers great potential for the repair of a wide range of damaged paper artifacts, some of which cannot be satisfactorily restored by any other method. The soundness of the basic concept has been demonstrated by results, in the form of the leaf-cast papers themselves, and corroborated by SEM investigations into the bonding of leaf-cast to original fibres. Just as in hand paper making the vat/vatman (and in machine paper making, the sheet-forming machine) is only one component of a manufacturing system, so a leaf-caster itself can only function successfully as one part of a system, based on a knowledge of the raw materials of paper making, their responses to treatment, the characteristics and properties of pulp and paper at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels (including after ageing) of which analysis (using resources within and external to the leaf-casting unit), stock preparation, drying, finishing equipment and specialist operators are the other components. The precision analysis, specification and calculation required in order to produce repairs compatible with the immense range of historical papers imposes strict methodological requirements. It is hoped that the present paper will help in this realization. |
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