The Origami Forum

Is there a way to strengthen tissue paper, besides making tissue foil and using methyl cellulose?

Is there a way to do that using white glue or something else everyone might have at home?

Glue will work, yes; typically you don't use it full strength, but dilute it 1:1 with water. Alternatively, you could try starch - wheat starch is strongest although others can be used as well, but these tend to end up as bugfood after a while.

For glues, there's two kinds:
1. White glue: this is made from polyvinyl acetate. It's non water soluble, so once you've put it on, it's permanent, so the paper can't be rewetted and reshaped.
2. Clear glue: this is from polyvinyl alcohol. It's water soluble so it can be used in the same way as methyl cellulose (ie, wet and reshape repeatedly). This is fairly strong though, and has a tendency to pull fibres out, so you'll have to apply it slowly with a good brush.

Wolf,

how exactly can I use white glue to strenghen tissue paper?

First we dilute it 1:1 with water. Then what? How do we apply that to the sheet of paper? Using a brush?

It's the same method as resizing paper with methyl cellulose. Put the tissue on a sheet of acrylic or glass, pin down the corners, then carefully apply the mix with a brush. If your tissue is very thin, however, then you might need to use a softer sponge instead, otherwise it'll tear.

Then, let this dry out before peeling it away from your acrylic/glass sheet. Cut to size, and fold!

Thanks, wolf! I will try that!

I have one more question:
Doesn´t the brush´s hair get stiff after you use it to spread the glue?

Yep, so you should wash the brush immediately once you're done. With the water soluble stuff it's no problem to get it off later (just soak it in water), but if you let water-insoluble white glue stay on, then it'll be there forever.

nothing will stay anywhere forever. there's always a solvent (Admittedly sometimes the only solvent is sulphuric acid at 70000°C, or a nitrogen plasma). methylated spirits, methanol, petrol, DMSO DMF etc etc. some are hard to get hold of though. i expect your PvAc will dissolve in meths or maybe acetone will work.

hermanntrude wrote:sometimes the only solvent is sulphuric acid at 70000°C, or a nitrogen plasma

Your brush will look nice afterwards (if you can retrieve it again...)

hermanntrude wrote:i expect your PvAc will dissolve in meths or maybe acetone will work.

Acetone might also take out a significant portion of the brush, depending on what it's made of.

On a somewhat related note, I've been wanting to find out if you can use IPA for 'wetfolding'; ie instead of methylcellulose in water, it'll be (??) in IPA, and you rewet the model with IPA whenever you want to shape it. The nice part of this is that IPA dries off a lot quicker, so you don't have to stick clothespegs all over your model and wait forever for it to dry. The question is finding a suitable (??) - what's something gluelike that holds paper together but dissolves again in IPA?

have u tried methyl cellulose? it seems like it might just dissolve in an alcohol,,, long shot though. maybe cellulose acetate? beyond that i couldnt guess. the only sizing agents i know about are the internal sizing agents (i think they were called AKD and ASA, or something like that... i wrote a paper on it)

The problem with methyl cellulose is that I don´t have a clue where to buy it where I live. I have searched for it on google, but it is pretty darn expensive and from what I found up you can´t buy it in small quantities, at least here in Brazil.

Does it come in powder form or liquid form?

What kind of shop sells it ?

esato, I think they use it for wallpaper glue.

esato wrote:Does it come in powder form or liquid form? What kind of shop sells it ?

You'll want the powder form, so you can mix it up to the concentration you need. Try looking in hardware stores and wallpaper stores - check the types of powdered wallpaper paste that you can find; they usually list its composition. Another alternative is to look at the laundry section of supermarkets. Check the starches around (both spray and powder form). You might find some that are methylcellulose based.