Cotton Linters, 2nd Cut

Cotton linters are in sheet form and sold by the pound. Each sheet measures 30" x 27" and weighs almost 1 pound. However we may cut sheets to fit more easily into boxes. Cotton linters can be processed very easily in a kitchen blender or other form of mixer if a Hollander beater is unavailable.

This pulp is produced from the short seed hairs of the cotton plant, Gossypium sp. When cotton is ginned, the long staple cotton is removed from the seed and used in the textile industry to make cloth. Then the seed is further processed in a machine called a "linter", which removes the rest of the seed hairs (the closer to the seed, the shorter the fiber). The first pass of the seed through the linter machine results in 1st cut cotton linters; the next pass produces 2nd cut cotton linters.

Cotton linters have been been cooked (in a 'digester') using sodium hydroxide, beaten in a series of refiners, bleached using chlorine and sodium hypochlorite, and then made into compressed sheets. Average fiber length is 1.3 mm. Cotton linters have a shorter fiber length than abaca, and paper made from them will show watermarking and laid & chain lines extremely well. We've made sheets of paper from cotton linters from various pulp mills and have found our current supplier to have the best quality pulp. Our 225HL-M comes from that mill. It can easily be processed into a usable pulp in a blender or a hydro-pulper, though the resulting paper tends to be softer and bulkier than when beaten in a Hollander beater. The short fiber of 2nd cut linters makes it very useful to pick up details in casting or other types of paper sculpture.