Making Paper

It did not take long to master the art of pulp testing. Actually, it was not an art, but something anybody could do with a bit of training and practice. It was not long before I was training someone else to do the job that I had just recently learned. But this meant that someone in the department had quit and there would be promotions. I wanted to move up and it did not take long.
Ocean Falls had a loyal population, but I discovered that those families that had been there all their lives, were involved in management, or in the higher paying jobs, such as pipe fitters, electricians, mill wrights, and machinists. There were many positions that were filled by itinerant workers and also many labour jobs filled by former convicts or even parolees. The isolation of the town prevented these men from getting back together with their former partners in crime and I worked with and befriended several hardened criminals who were good workers who eventually settled down and made productive lives for themselves. But they were a rough bunch.
Tech Control had a high turnover of employees so it was fast and easy to establish some seniority. I was soon trained as a paper tester and for several months went back and forth until a permanent position in the paper testing station came available.
Imagine an insulated refuge in the midst of 4 large, noisy, rumbling paper machines, with air conditioning, proper lighting, sound proofing, and surrounded on four sides by plate glass windows so there was a view of all the action without getting dirty.
All the samples were brought to a chute and the paper tester rarely had to go out of his lab/refuge. This had many advantages but also some disadvantages. It could become a hangout for other workers during the night shifts when there were no bosses around.
I learned a great deal about paper in a short period of time, but I learned the paper making process over the next few months by observing and asking a lot of questions. I found it fascinating that a slurry of watery pulp could become paper so quickly and efficiently. The paper making machine was a marvel of technology and a series of clever inventions.
The pulp was evenly distributed, at the wet end of the machine, onto a 20 ft. wide 'screen' that was rotating on drums at about 2000 ft per minute. The 'screen' was a brass sheet with tiny uniform perforations which sucked the moisture out of the pulp with the help of triangular shaped foils scraping the underside of the screen as it whizzed by. By the time the pulp reached the end of the screen, it was just rigid enough to be transferred to a felt. It clung to the felt as it coursed through the driers, winding up and down repeatedly, and became a moist sheet of paper. It left the felt and began winding on its own through more lengths of driers until it reached a stack of hard, smooth, steel rollers that compressed the pulp into a dry smooth sheet of paper. This process was all a blur as the machine ran so fast you could not focus on the sheet at any given point.
From the stack, the 20 ft. wide sheet of paper was wound onto a large steel spool and when the spool of paper was about 4 ft. in diameter, the paper was broken on the fly and began winding on the spool in reserve. From the spool, the fresh roll of paper was put onto a winder/cutter where it was cut and rewound into smaller rolls according to the customer's requirements. Our customers were major new papers in San Fransisco and San Diego as well some Norwegian customers. Just before the paper was cut and rewound, samples would be cut from the spool from edge/centre/edge to get a sampling of the paper from across the machine. Every twenty minutes from each machine, I would get samples and had to get results out as quickly as possible. It would get hectic when all 4 machines 'broke' at the same time, but it was fun.
For the present, life was good, work was enjoyable, the pay excellent, but I was continually thinking about my future. I was rubbing shoulders with men who had worked in the mill and lived in Ocean Falls all their lives and I was beginning to see that it was not a future for me.