The Origami Forum

Hello,

This is my first post. I am relatively knew to complex origami. I have been able to finish a few rather complex models after a few attempts, that hardest probably being Komatsu's lion, or his giraffe. I've been folding with Tant, and doing the final models with Elephant Hide paper. I have a few questions regarding these papers:

Must you always apply MC (I use wallpaper paste) to the paper prior to wet folding, as lafosse suggests? Will just plain water work (say, for elephant hide)? I find that for models that take more than a few hours, the paper gets too difficult to keep moist. It tends to dry too hard and I cannot finish, because the inner layers are very dry.

When do you know that it is better to wet finish as opposed to wet fold?

Thanks!!

The paper you are using already had sizing put into it during production, which is what MC does; so no - you do not need to apply MC with Tant or elephant hide. For models such as insects which take a long time to fold, I only wet the part I am working on, shape it, dry it, and repeat on the rest. If you wet the whole thing it once, which I assume you were doing, it won't dry how you need it to.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for your input! I have been working on primarily land mamals, and I have been wetting the paper prior to folding. Your reply makes me wonder whether I should do that or not. It seems that there is a logical point during the fold at which you should add water to the model, whether it's at the very beginning or just at the end for final shaping.

It depends on what your folding. If your folding one of Giang Dinh's (or similar) models, you should wet it prior to folding. If you go the Kamiya/Lang route, then you should wet finish the model as it can take 5+ hours to get to a point where you'll need to shape it, and wetting tissue thin paper prior to folding doesn't go over that well.

There is a logical point to apply water in every model, but there is no algorithm to figure out where that is. Just keep playing around with wet folding and finishing, and you'll get the hang of it eventually