The Consolidated Water Power and Paper Company Plant
N 44° 23.583 W 089° 49.565
16T E 274920 N 4919414
The Consolidated Water Power and Paper Company Plant is now owned by New Page, but still exists and makes Pulp and Paper.
Waymark Code: WM2BY1
Location: Wisconsin, United States
Date Posted: 10/09/2007
Views: 30
From The WPA Guide to Wisconsin (Tour 8 - pg. 401):
"THE CONSOLIDATED WATER POWER AND PAPER COMPANY PLANT, First Ave. N. and Jackson Sts. (conducted tours on weekdays: 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.), has the largest of its four plants on the western side of the river. Tours of the plant begin at the mill office entrance. Visitors are taken first to the wood room where hemlock, spruce, and poplar logs are cut to two-foot lengths and conveyed to barking drums. Blocks are reduced to chips which are cooked in sulphite digesters, while some of the wood is conveyed in two-foot lengths to grinders. The pulp in a thin milky form is first pumped through paper machines which remove the water by drainage through a screen or "wire," then sent to the presees. After passing over dryers and through calenders, the pulp is ready for super-calendering. From here it is shipped in the form of rolls or taken to the sheet department and cut into specified sizes. At the end of the trip visitors are presented with souvenir tablets containing paper made in the plant."
New Page no longer runs tours of the plant.
The general description of papermaking has changed little in 65 years. The major addition to the WPA Guide's description of the process is that now Coaters coat the paper before it is super-calendered. (super-calendering basically presses and steams the paper to give it a particular surface finish - gloss/dull/matte/satin).