I’m thinking that toilet-rolls might not ring a bell with our US-brethren, but don’t know what the phrase would be. I’m sure I don’t need to be indelicate, so I’ll add that in the UK they’re sometimes loo-roll (less formal), bog-roll (quite a bit more indelicate) and toilet tissue (if your name’s Hyacinth Bucket).
Anyhow, I was thinking (as you do; you can probably guess where) - this stuff is quite fine tissue [sub]well, ours is - I’ll go without food and beer so as to provide my nether regions with the highest standard of botty-care[/sub] and I assume the original process involves very wide ‘bolts’ of tissue on a long cardboard inner, which subsequently gets cut up.
The thing is, I can’t see how a blade would be sharp enough to rip through this without either crushing the paper and the inner tube, or leaving loads of paper scraps (i.e. think of what would happen if you took an electric chopsaw to a roll - it’d destroy it and you’d be picking up tiny paper bits for months). If you look at either end of a roll, it’s cut with amazing… ‘fineness’ for want of a better word.
I work for a toilet roll manufacturer, and whilst Im not directly involved in the production side I have been around the machines.
The converting process begins with a parent reel (weighs about a ton) This looks like a HUGE coreless toilet roll about 6 feet wide. This is wound onto a core (again 6 feet wide) once the requisite 240 sheets have been wound onto the core then you have a log. One parent reel will make many logs of course.
The log then goes to a ‘cumulator’ where it goes through some VERY sharp circular saws. When I asked a production guy the phrase ’ like ahot knfe through butter was used’. These circular sawa are self sharpening and very very straight.
This is only the basic process, it gets more complex for multiple plys etc
Only a SWAG as I don’t have time to research this minute… But If I had to do the job, I would set the roll on a mandrel (to keep the roll from being crushed) and use a bandsaw knife or a rotating blade. I’ll see if I can find an actual manufacturer to help us out.
Toilet paper (and paper towels) are made in MONGO sized rolls, think on the scale of 10m wide, 5m high (Diameter), on a paper machine that runs very fast. These large rolls are spooled on a winder, then the web is cut off at a given diameter and a new roll is begun, not slowing the paper machine at all.
These MONGO rolls are then taken to an unwind station, where they are slit down to smaller widths (maybe 5m). These “smaller” rolls are taken to another machine that prints or embosses the paper as it is unwound, then it is re-wound on the core you see inside the rolls in your home, except the core is like 5m long. These are rolled onto the core to the diameter of the roll in your home, then that web is cut and another 5m wide, 10cm diameter rolls is started on the next core.
This 10cm x 5m rolls is transferred laterally into a well protected room where a BIG friggin knife swings in a big vertical circle, with the spinning blade intersecting the path of the 10cm x 5m roll as it moves through that room, perpendicular to the path of the knife. The knife rotation and the movement of the rolls from one side to the other is coordinated so that the width cut is what you see in your home. Since the long roll never really stops, the cut on the end of your roll is not straight.
To envision the knife, think of a circular saw at the end of a long arm, with a couterbalance on the opposite side of the pivot point for the saw arm.
This is what I have seen a Proctor and Gamble Towel and Tissue facilitilies in the US.
First, the tissue is manufactured in large scroll-like sheets that are spooled on a “parent reel”. These can be stored for later processing or sold as is to other manufacturers.
The reel is unwound and fed to a slitter, or cutting machine. The process is the same for most kinds of paper. The tissue is “slit” using blades. It’s cut before being wound on the tube.
Sure, you might make a mess if you try cutting a sheet of bathroom tissue using a chain-saw. Give it a try with a pair of scissors, though…
Here is the site of a company that manufactures knifes (blades) that are used in tissue slitting machines. (Pics in link.)
Many thanks to all for the insight and links; I can’t believe this place. I shall now not be able to look at my humble tissue again without imagining more scary looking industrial machines than you can shake a stick at…
And to excerpt from Tapioca’s unmissable Toilet Paper World:
What people used before toilet tissue (abridged).
*Hayballs, Scraper/gompf stick kept in container by the privy in the Middle Ages
*Discarded sheep’s wool in the Viking Age, England
*Frayed end of an old anchor cable was used by sailing crews from Spain and Portugal *Medieval Europe- Straw, hay, grass, gompf stick
*Corn cobs, Sears Roebuck catalog, mussel shell, newspaper, leaves, sand- United States
Corn cobs? Anchor cables? I don’t even want to know what a gompf stick is… :eek: