Day 1

First thing on day one of filming we gather on the beach to record Kate giving out the challenges. Kathy and Mike are to map the northern part of the island. Ellen and I are to make paper and ink, so that their findings can be charted. At the end of day three, we're to produce a map using as many coloured inks as we can squeeze from Carriacou. I like this challenge.

The first task Ellen and I face is to find suitable plant material from which to make the paper. I'm relying completely on Ellen's expertise here. Sure, I've seen paper made before - back in the UK - from stinging nettles. But this is on camera which is different. Ellen chooses two possible sources of fibre - the silk cotton tree and the milk wood plant. The former is a weird-looking tree with a root system the like of which I've never seen before. The part of the tree we're after are the seeds. These are catkin like, and we need to collect a couple of bucketfuls and then separate the soft fibres from the stalks.

Because of its sturdy, chain-like molecular structure, cellulose plays a structural role in a plant, supporting its weight. For paper-making, we'll need to break down the long fibrous cellulose molecular structure into shorter chains. These shorter fibres will then more readily be able to form a mesh: what we need for a good paper. To do this, I'll need to produce an alkaline solution of some sort, in which to boil the cellulose fibres. I decide on potash, which is simply made from the ashes from our wood fires dissolved in hot water (boil for 30 minutes) and filtered. The resulting solution turns out to be a surprisingly clear pale yellow liquid with a pH of around 10-11.

This should be adequate to break down the cellulose structure but just to make sure, I prepare some 'fortified' potash by adding slaked lime to half of the potash. To make the lime, it's enough to place some seashells (almost all calcium carbonate) off the beach in the kiln and heat them for a few hours at high temperature. The calcium carbonate is converted into lime (or calcium oxide), which when added to water produces slated lime (or calcium hydroxide).

When you mix slaked lime and potash (from the wood ashes, which contains potassium carbonate), you get a reaction that produces potassium hydroxide and calcium carbonate - a neat chemical dance, in which partners are swapped. Because the calcium carbonate is not very soluble in water, it falls out of solution and gives the liquid mixture a cloudy appearance (thereby confirming the formation of potassium hydroxide). Potassium hydroxide is a much stronger alkali than the potassium carbonate of the potash, with a pH of around 12. We'll try four different combinations in our attempt to break down the cellulose fibres to give paper - the cotton silk with potash and fortified potash, and milk wood with potash and fortified potash. All we need to do is mix the fibres with the alkaline solution and boil the mixture in the kiln for a few hours.

While the four solutions are bubbling away, Ellen and I try to extract some coloured inks from the various plants that she's found on the island. One of the key ingredients is iron sulfate: this not only reacts with the tannins in certain plants like logwood but it also serves as a mordant - the chemical that fixes the pigment to the paper surface. Iron sulfate is easy enough to make - you just take a few iron nails and dissolve them in sulfuric acid from the car battery. The result is a green solution, from which white crystals of iron sulfate (FeSO4) fall out on cooling. I decide to re-crystallize the iron sulfate in order to purify it. Our afternoon is spent mixing various solutions of plant extract in an attempt to get as many colours as we can. Some of these extracts change colour when you add (battery) acid to them and the brightest of the lot we get from the milk wood plant extract mixed with sulfuric acid - a beautiful red. Isn't Nature wonderful?! We've something like ten different coloured inks, most of them fairly dull, it has to be said. But then, that just shows how dull life must have been before the advent of synthetic dyes.

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Content last updated: 21/07/2006