Do It Yourself

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What do you recommend as a solution to harden paper? (libranet.de)

submitted 9 months ago by petrescatraian@libranet.de to c/diy

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I have a few project ideas, and I thought of reusing the paper from various shop catalogs that I receive in my physical mailbox. I'd like to make it stiffer, something more like cardboard. I read somewhere online that you could use corn starch for this, mixed with water. Would it work? Do you have better ideas?

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[–] jarfil 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Depends on the project, and the paper... or more exactly, the ink on it.

If the catalogs are printed with water based ink, then you can soak the paper in water and make paper pulp, then mix in whatever hardener you want: corn starch, white glue, any wood glue, or even epoxy (but mind the toxicity and curing times).

If they are printed with toner (basically fused plastic), then you may have a harder time separating the pulp. You can shred the paper and throw it into boiling water, stir well then let it rest to hopefully separate the toner by density, then use as the pulp above.

Or... you can use the plastic to your advantage, by heating it up to fuse one piece of plastic/toner coated paper to another (toner should fully melt at around 130C), with a clothes iron, hair iron (set to 130-150C, and through a sheet of non-toner paper or some kapton tape so you don't fill them with toner), or carefully with a heat gun (better if it has temperature control, 150-200C should be a safe range). Or... use glues, but plastic ones this time, like lacquer, super glue... and I guess epoxy should work in either case.

Depending on the project, you might even encase it fully in epoxy, either a two part or a UV reactive one (but probably avoid 3D printer resin, it's formulated to only react in a thin layer at a time).

PS: from the numbers alone, it should be possible to melt the toner away from the paper in a 120C liquid, but you may have a problem doing that with water (a high pressure cooker comes to mind, which would get ruined afterwards; salt might help, but not sure how would that impact the pulp; maybe high temperature steam in a microwave could work, but that gets dangerous pretty fast). Oil would be an obvious choice, but it would coat the pulp, then you'd have to use a detergent... quite a mess.