for an airplane competition, a ream of 20-pound office paper is readily available and inexpensive, so that is what most people use. If a local printing company will donate the paper, ask for 50-pound offset, but don’t be fussy. Thank them profusely, even if they give you misprints. (There are plenty of sponsorship opportunities here.)
When folding paper airplane models for display or photography, we sometimes prefer to fold thin, crisp, white tracing paper with a hard surface finish (this stock is translucent, which shows off the interesting lines of internal folds). These models may not fly as well because the paper is light. Although the creases look sharp, they are also weak. One final note: terms such as “bond,” “offset” or “letter” paper are generic. You should expect quality to vary between different brands, and even paper formulations of the same brand can be changed from time to time. Test, test, test!
Testing Papers
Trial and error is a good teacher, but using the scientific method will help you to organize your investigations and better evaluate your findings. The following is a simple experiment to test papers against airplane designs.
1. Choose one design.
2. Fold several versions with the same size, but different types of paper.
3. Fly each and make notes about their performance.
4. If performance correlates with a given characteristic (say, weight), fold more models with even heavier paper, to determine where the performance benefits trail off.
5. Note the weight that gives you the best performance.
6. You can run the tests again with the same design but with a different variable, say square area.
Eventually you will be able to match paper type, size and airplane design to get your best performance. Remember, you are a variable, too!
Now that you know more about paper types and choices, you will be rewarded by being able to make better choices and evaluations, whether at a paper airplane competition or for your own enjoyment.
Fold the same design at different sizes to discover which scale works best for a given plane.
Additional Paper Handling Tips
Here are some additional tips to optimize your folding experience:
• Make sure your hands are clean and dry. Sorry for nagging, but paper can easily absorb oils and moisture from your skin.
• Leave the paper in the packaging. Paper left out of its packaging is subject to damage from a variety of agents.
• Examine both sides of the paper carefully. Some papers have a finished side that is smoother than the other side. Know which side will show when you fold your model. We have color-coded our diagrams to help you: White is the inside of the model and the colored side is the predominant display side of the finished model.
• When using pages from discarded magazine or calendars, or other “trash” papers, make sure the sheet is completely flat and that the corners are square. Trim to remove any ugly wrinkles or bruised edges.
• If you are adding graphics to your paper, be sure to leave enough time for toner to cool, or inks to dry before folding. Incidentally, papers that pass through the heated rollers of toner-based printers and copy machines seem to become crisper and make better planes.
• Planes that sit around for a while will tend to lose the sharpness in their creases, making them sloppy, unbalanced and not airworthy. Always refresh your creases and check symmetry before flight.
Preparing Your Paper
In the following sections we provide several methods for trimming paper to the proportions used in this book. Use a straightedge or ruler, pencil, and scissors or paper cutter, to easily scale your papers, making larger or smaller sheets of each format. You can use any of the numbers, displayed with each of the rectangular icons in this section, as factors to scale or trim your paper.
Square Paper
Square paper is the simplest format to prepare, and you can even do it without any tools. This is perhaps why the square is the most common format for origami design. Vertical and horizontal sides are equal, so the ratio of a square’s adjacent sides is 1:1. To prepare the largest possible square from any rectangle simply fold one of the short edges to match an adjacent long edge. If you do not want to make a diagonal crease, use two sheets of the same size rectangle, overlapping them at one corner while aligning the second perpendicular to other. Trim the excess of each for two clean squares.
The technical specifications of a square.
To turn a long rectangle into a square, fold at a 45-degree angle, short edge to long edge. Unfold, and trim. Don’t toss those trimmed strips into the recycling bin just yet! See page 87 for a great use for these scraps.
A Word About A-Series Paper and the Silver Rectangle
A4 letter paper is a common format outside of North America. The A-Series format, prescribed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), is a Silver Rectangle, with adjacent sides having an aspect ratio of 1: √2. The larger side is as long as the length of the diagonal of the largest possible square. One particularly desirable characteristic of paper in this format is that when a Silver Rectangle is divided in half through its long edges, the resulting, smaller rectangles have adjacent sides in the same proportion as the parent rectangle.
If a diagonal crease is not desired, simply take another sheet of the same dimensions, turn it 90 degrees, and lay it atop the first sheet. Trim away the excess.
The technical specifications of A4 paper.
Turn US letter size paper into a Silver Rectangle by executing the steps depicted in the series below.
Scale Any Rectangle
It is useful to know how to cut smaller or larger rectangles of the same proportion to make paper planes that perform well and look better on display. No matter the kind of rectangle, the method is the same. Inscribe a diagonal line that spans two corners of the rectangle. Intersect this line at any desired point, and connect that point back to each edge with perpendicular cut lines leading to the vertical and horizontal edges.
Forming a US Letter Proportion from a Square
Letter paper commonly found in North America measures 8½ inches by 11 inches. You can measure and cut these rectangles from odd stock and you can use the above method (see “Scale Any Rectangle”) to make larger or smaller examples. However, there is a quick approximation you can use to make rectangles with proportions close enough for the projects in this book. Fold the square in half, edge to edge, but make only a pinch to mark the center. Open. Fold one edge to the pinch and trim off the resulting
