A Paper Tale - And Another Mill Start-Up

A PAPER TALE 

Many years ago in a kingdom by the Pee Dee ,

They built a paper mill near Florence , in 1963.

 

      Apologies to, Edgar Allen Poe.

 

It was built on a shoestring, even in those days, for about $26 million ($369 M today).  This included the whole mill, pulp, paper, power, water treatment - in and out, and the woodyard.  They bought no land, just the mill site…unheard of.

 

I was one of 4 process engineers (3 from NC State) and one from Rock Hill. The startup was at Christmas time in 1963 and we all had to stand around 16 hours a day and watch  production  try to get the mill going.  Everyone had bought a new pair of safety shoes, so this was particularly bad on the feet.  As with all paper mill startups, we had to beat the design rates  (about 450 tons per day) - so we went to 700 tons per day quickly.  An "off brand" set of brown stock washers barely washed the pulp and we were stuck with a soda loss of  175 #/T.  Good was about 25 #/t.  The single pulp storage would hold  an hour’s production for the machine. The forming section on the machine corroded away in about a year.  The bronze wires lasted a  a week.  The alum tank would hold about a truck load or a days run.  The tank was completely enclosed and the level gage  never worked - so keeping the paper mill satisfied and  supply trucks from getting into demurrage was a process engineer’s nightmare.  Remember the 1^st rule of papermaking: “If a little alum does good, a whole lot will do a lot better.”

 

Another process engineer’s nightmare was keeping saltcake inventory  in balance.  The storage tank held 1 & ½ days run.  The railcars came from Canada and took 20 days to arrive - but -  you better not run out or incur demurrage (which was $16 a day)!  The plant manager had decreed  there would be no demurrage paid. The alum and the saltcake tank’s inventories turned all of the process engineer’s hair white (or loose) and our stomach’s sour.  In other words, everything in the plant was too small…a typical start-up.

 

My first area of responsibility was in the paper mill.  We switched jobs about every 6 months or so.  I had the alum tank, the paper lab, and  process control. We had one paper tester per shift.  As you know, in linerboard mills, the only test that is looked at is mullen. If mullen is low, the machine is slowed back, which can never be allowed.  The production people were supposed to have their own mullen tester.  They promptly burst theirs and never again ran any mullen tests.  That is how we, in the paper lab, ended up with 2 Mullen tester machines.  The paper mill super always insisted on using the one giving the highest reading which required me to spend many lonely nights  trying to get them to read together…an impossible task.  Never have 2 Mullen testers!

 

The powers that be, decreed that we would have Mullen test results by roll … another impossible task - so we finally ran the tests by set and guessed at the roll position.  The paper mill management flatly refused to stop the machine after each set (3 or 4 set reels) to get samples.  We had to hire an extra paper tester to accomplish this and one of them was  your friend.  I distinctly remember the profound words he uttered on the night of start-up.  After working the night shift, he said, “I didn’t even have time to eat lunch!”  Henry was a good boy and tester.  Of course, the busy time got shorter as they learned to do their job more efficiently.  Henry began to sell Pilot insurance in his off time and he probably owns the company by now.

 

After a few months of wire changes each week, I suggested to the Papermill Superintendent that we try this new stuff…wirelife extender (WLE).  He didn’t say no, but “hell no”.  A few weeks passed and my boss asked why we didn’t try the WLE.  I told him why and he went to the superintendent's boss.  I don’t know if you knew him but he was probably the most renown papermaker of his time.  Originally from  Georgetown , he had worked his way up through the ranks doing start-ups mostly.  He was a hell raisin’, fighting, drinking, and man with great papermaking abilities who didn’t trust “college boys” or paper testers that got “bad results.”  You know the type. He was in charge of the paper and pulp mills.  He knew as much about the pulp mill as I did at the time…almost nothing.  He thought of them as “The Enemy”.   For some strange reason, he said he’d “speak with the superintendent”.  In a few days, the superintendent called me up and said he wanted to try the WLE so we were ready to start after the next wire change.  We asked him where we should put it and he  replied that he didn’t give a damn if we poured the GD barrel in the wire pit.  We applied it to a shower over a wire turning roll.  The first wire ran 22 days; a record by about 3 times.  The superintendent got very interested after that.

 

One day, the manager just left without notice to anyone. Sometime later he turned up at another start-up.   He died a few years ago.  I miss him and will always remember his antics.

 

After 3 years, in 1966, our plant manager  was given some money to distribute to salaried folks at the plant.  The minimum amount was about $1400 (about $16,000* today), twice as much as I was making per month.  Almost everyone got the bonus: foremen and above, the safety director, accountants, the engineers etc. but not process engineers.  All who got it were told not to tell anyone under threat of being fired.  Of course, it got out to everyone.  I decided to leave as soon as I could find another job.  All three process engineers from State left.  I was offered a job in Roanoke Rapids and was about to take it when a job came open at Catawba.  Thank goodness  I ended up there.

 

* Using nominal GDP per capita.

Jack Frank