in example 1 was wound around a round rotator to produce a 1 050 mm wide laminated sheet of alumina fiber precursor comprising 63 layers of the lamina sheet and this laminated sheet was calcined to obtain an approximately 40 mm thick and approximately 740 mm width alumina fiber sheet this alumina fiber sheet was cut to a width of 600 mm and subjected to the same test as said above the scatter determined in the same way as in example 1 was 17 4 a thin lamina sheet with a basis weight of 40 g m 2 and a width of 1 050 mm obtained in the same way as in example 1 was folded stacked and separated at a higher rate than in example 1 to produce a 950 mm wide continuous laminated sheet of alumina fiber precursor comprising 30 layers of the lamina sheet to this laminated sheet was sprayed 30 ml kg of a 10 wt higher fatty acid ester mineral oil solution as a lubricant after which the sheet was subjected to needling at a rate of 5 stitches cm 2 and then calcined in the same way as in example 1 to make a continuous alumina fiber sheet having a thickness of about 10 mm and a width of 650 mm evaluations of this alumina fiber sheet by the same method as used in example 1 showed a scatter of 6 7 in order to evaluate suitability of the obtained alumina fiber sheet for use as a holder for exhaust gas cleaning systems five 50 mm u00d7 50 mm square test pieces were collected from the sheet by cutting it in the width direction at equal intervals and each test piece was subjected to 5 time repetition.