What Are Rolling Papers Made Of?

Rolling papers are so thin, it’s hard to wrap our brains around sometimes, you know? At just 12 gsm, they are practically transparent, yet still can be made into perfect, slow-burning, easy-to-fill cones and wrapped into joints, and strong enough to hold the weight of a premium filter tip.

And because of that, there’s a lot of misconceptions – and some weird marketing language – about what rolling papers are made of and how they’re made.

So let’s just get right to it and answer the question.

What Are Rolling Papers Made Of?

Put simply: wood. Rolling papers are made from wood pulp.

Like all traditional paper, rolling papers are made from trees that have been harvested and turned into a pulp, then pressed and refined until they reach the right thickness.

In the case of DaySavers high-quality rolling papers and pre-rolled cones, that’s about 12 gsm, or “grams per square meter.” See, paper is measured by its weight, which translates to its thickness. The lower the number, the thinner the paper.

Copy paper, for example, is about 90-100 gsm. Cigarettes are rolled in paper that is about 28 gsm. A magazine cover is closer to 300 gsm, and business and greeting cards get closer to 400 gsm.

But our DaySavers rolling papers are ultra refined until they get to 12 gsm, which is why you can almost see right through them.

How Are Rolling Papers Made?

As we said, it’s the amount of refining done that matters here and our rolling papers are ultra refined. But again, it’s part of the standard paper-making process, which in simple terms looks like this:

• Pulping & Delignification: Raw wood fibers are broken down chemically or mechanically to liberate cellulose fibers from lignin, a natural wood polymer that binds them together, giving wood its strength and color.
• Washing & Bleaching: Spent chemicals and dissolved lignin are washed out; remaining lignin is removed through a bleaching process to create white papers, however – and this is important – at DaySavers we use a Total Chlorine Free process that uses hydrogen peroxide as the bleaching agent and never any type of chlorine bleach.
• Refining & Furnish Preparation: Pulp fibers are mechanically beaten to improve bonding potential in what is called a “slurry.” The more heavily the fibers are beaten – or “refined” - the thinner the paper. This step is also where additives (like fillers and sizing agents) are mixed in to achieve any other properties needed in that batch of paper.
• Sheet Formation: The diluted fiber slurry is stretched across a wire mesh. The water is drained away and fibers begin to settle into a bonded web. This is literally where the paper gets made and the thinner the slurry is stretched, the thinner the paper becomes.
• Pressing & Drying: The wet sheet is mechanically pressed to remove water, again also affecting the paper’s thickness, and then passed over heated cylinders to evaporate the remainder and reach the final moisture content.

What About Hemp Rolling Paper and Flax Rolling Paper?

So while most rolling papers are made with wood pulp, like any other paper, there are rolling papers made with other fibers, such as flax or hemp. DaySavers, for example, makes our pre-rolled cones in a hemp paper variety for smokers who like to keep their papers as close to the flower as possible.

But even with hemp rolling papers or flax rolling papers, the general paper-making steps remain the same (though this is not the case for hemp wraps for blunts, for example). The difference comes in the pulp used to make the paper.

For hemp paper, the process starts with hemp fibers instead of wood. In the end, the result is the same, though the paper is usually slightly thicker (about 13.5 gsm vs 12 for wood) and slightly less transparent, just due to the nature of the hemp fibers.

For flax papers, the process begins with fibers from the flax plant, one of the oldest domesticated plants in the world that is used for food, oils, textiles and yes, paper.

Final Thoughts on What Rolling Papers are Made Of

So there you have it: Most rolling papers are made with wood pulp. It is refined through a series of age-old steps to be super thin and transparent, but when it comes right down to it, your rolling papers are probably made of wood.

Some rolling papers use different fibers, such as hemp or flax, to begin the process, but the steps and the results are basically the same. And no, “rice paper” is not a thing in the rolling paper game.

So unless your papers specifically say “hemp” or “flax,” it’s probably just wood pulp that’s been ultra-refined to better help you Enjoy Your Day.