Method of making soft tissue products

DETAILED DESCRIPTION It has now been discovered that certain throughdrying fabrics can impart significantly increased cross-machine direction (CD) stretch to the resulting tissue product, while at the same time also delivering high bulk, increased flexibility, a fast wicking rate, and a high absorbent capacity.
These fabrics are characterized by a multiplicity of "impression knuckles" which are defined for purposes herein as being fabric knuckles which are elongated in the machine direction (MD) of the tissuemaking process, which are raised significantly above of the plane of the drying fabric, and which appear to overlap when the fabrics are viewed in the cross-machine direction.
These impression knuckles impart corresponding protrusions in the tissue sheet as it is dried on the fabric.
The height, orientation, and arrangement of the resulting protrusions in the sheet provide increased bulk, increased cross-machine direction stretch, increased flexibility, increased absorbent capacity and increased wicking rates.
All of these properties are desirable for products such as facial tissue, bath tissue and paper towels or the like, herein collectively referred to as tissue products.
The tissue sheets made in accordance with this invention can be used for one-ply or multiple-ply tissue products.
Surprisingly, it has also been discovered that the combination of uncreped throughdrying with high bulk fabrics and temporary wet strength chemistry results in soft tissue products with superior physical properties when partially saturated.
Specific properties include Wet Compressed Bulk or WCB (hereinafter defined and expressed in cc/gm), Loading Energy Ratio or LER (hereinafter defined and expressed as %) and Wet Springback or WS (hereinafter defined and expressed as %).
Tissues made by this invention are unique in their ability to achieve high values for all three of these tests simultaneously.
These superior properties are achieved because the tissue's wet strength is established on the throughdrier fabric, while the sheet is in its desired three-dimensional configuration