Well its been awhile since I got this idea and its been rolling it around in my head for a few months. I decided to try again. This time I made up a batch made of poo-paper as follows:
Crushed/shredded maple leaves
Very finely shredded straw
Garlic straw chips
Sheep manure & water
Paper pulp
White glue
Cubensis spawn on popcorn (use any grain)
Take the leaves , finely ground straw, garlic straw chips, and sheep manure and soak it in a pot of sheep poo water for 12 hours. Then I let take an osterizer mixer jug and put the blade assembly on. In the jug I put as much water as I can safely mix and add 2 inch squares of newsprint. It worked out to about 2 cups paper shred per batch.
You blend the paper pieces in the warm water starting low and working your way up to half speed. You blend for about 10 and no longer. You don't want to to overbeat the pulp. This blending renders the paper instantly into pulp. Pour each batch into a large bowl and continue making more. When you have several cups of paper pulp in the bowl set it aside to congeal and set more.
Now take equal portions of the soaked / drained leaves, garlic, straw and sheep dung and place in the blender jug. Fill the jug to the safe max with sheep poo water , add a squirt of white glue and blend well. For this you start low and work your way up to high. You want to blend this concoction to the maximum. Keep adding the finished jugs to a clean bucket.
When its done you are ready to start making paper. All you need to do is mix the poo/leaf mixture 50 / 50 with the grey paper pulp and stir it around in a pale. This mixture is poured over the screen. The screen is tacked to a wood frame so its tight. This sits over top of a plastic tub that catches the dripping water.
When the leaf / pulp mixture is poured evenly over the screen it immeadiatley starts to drain. You keep pouring it everywhere and the more you pour , the thicker the paper gets. You can even wait a minute and let it set-up a bit and then pour more.
At this point you let it drip drain and the paper begins to set as it dries. Now you are free to make sheets or to make other shapes. One of the ideas i'm trying is to roll the poo-paper sheets up into tight logs.
For this round I decided to re-shape the poo-paper when it was half dry and still pliable. I took margerine style containers with many tiny holes in the bottom and placed the poo-paper material inside it. It gets packed nicely and firmly than I use a jar with a lid on as a weight and squeeze excess water out onto a towel.
This process goes on for a bit as the last of teh water comes out. When its done the poo-paper is now a puck. Its very solid.
The pucks are plopped out of that tub and placed in the tubs you see in the pics. They are then PC'd for one hour @ 15 psi with a dish towel over and around the tubs to keep them off the PC walls.
When the pucks are done being PC'd and cooled completely I needed to make holes in them to let excess water out and to be used as FAE breathers. When completely cool I opened the tubs and placed cubensis spawn of popcorn in between the 2 pucks.
It looks kind of wierd but as soon as the mycelium hit the poo-paper it really loved it. The pictures you see are after one week of growth at 75 F. Its really starting to catch on now that I made a few more air-holes.
In the last picture you see a puck that I intentionally tried to infect with trich. The tirch came from a nice green jar or grain and was transferred into the jar you see a week ago. Since then the trich has withered a bit and has not advanced on to the puck at all ... i've got it in the dark at 75 F also. Should be interesting to watch that.
So anyways thats my report for now. I'll try and give more details as they come. The pucks look good so far.
Feel free to try this at home.
Cheers
H
