Hmmn,... a quote from my profile.
I feel,...violated
On to the Strathmore Paper question
I asked around some of the old paper machine guys and here's what they told me.
The Marvel paper is 2-ply. What happens is that two rolls of paper are run through a machine and at one point, glue is applied to one side. The two seperate rolls of paper are then squeezed together making one thicker sheet (thus, the 2-ply) and passed through a heater to dry the paper. At some point it is also laminated. 3-ply and 4-ply are done the same way.
We get the paper cut roughly to the size of a two page spread. Each page is then put between two sheets of metal (think of cookie sheets for baking) and then the sheets protected by the metal are put into a machine. This machine has two heavy rollers about 18 in diameter and the paper is rolled back and forth compressing it to the 'plate' finish. Every sheet of paper with a plate finish is done by hand this way.
On a quick side note, supposedly a worker once got his arm sucked in between the rolls and crushed his arm pretty badly but I suspect that it's more of a fairy tale than the truth.
The paper, still sized about a two page spread, is sent out. From there, it gets the Marvel blueline details put on by an outside source, not Strathmore.
So, when the page you had started to separate at the corner it was either the lamination peeling off or the glueing process didn't take well on that particular sheet.
The hollow between the layers was an air bubble that wasn't smoothed out during the glueing process. I guess getting the air bubbles to smooth out is a pain in the butt.
The grain of something was probably exactly that, something that fell on to one of the two layers of paper during or before the glueing process.
The glueing process is done at a different facility so I haven't seen the machinery. But, I also use to assist in making printing plates for printing presses (formerly Ani-tec now Kodak Polychrome Graphics for those that might care). I'm going to guess that it's a vaguely similar process where the raw paper is is strung out along a series of rolls, usually called a web because it looks like one, and rerolled up into one giant roll at the end. The 'web' for cleaning, processing and applying the light sensitive coating for making printing plates was 800 feet long. I'm thinking the paper web was not quite as long though.
I'm trying to get Strathmore to pay for my visit to Wizard World Boston (about 90 minutes away from Strathmore) under the guise of 'research' via the artist alley but they aren't buying into it.
Jim