“Paper is wood pulp. Its a fiber after the pulp is cooked down, which looks like oatmeal..and that is exactly what they call it at the mills.”
I had training as a rare book conservator. I had to make make paper in a conservation lab in grad school. We had a small hammer mill to pulverize the wood or fiber and then, after bleaching we’d insert a framed screen into the vat of pulp to make a hand laid sheet.
Kind of fun but a messy process
That is it in a nut shell.
They chip the roundwood, it goes in the digester, it gets cooked and broken down into pulp, then it is bleached, then it gets spread onto the mill felt and after enough water drains out and it can support itself as a sheet it goes through the paper machine which is a gang of steam heated rollers. It ends up at the tail end, then the roll goes to be coated to make it glossy. Some cut it before the rewinders before they coat it and some do it before.
This is for publishing paper.
Fascinating.