The Origami Forum

Anyone who follows my gallery on here or on Flickr knows that I'm primarily a purist when it comes to origami, but I dabble in tessellations a bit. I'm running into a bit of a problem, though: cutting an accurate regular hexagon.
These are the methods I currently use:

1)
-Cut a strip of paper
-Crease it in fourths longways
-Fold one corner to the 1/4 crease through the midpoint of the short edge (this gives a 60deg angle)

2)
-Use the given 60deg angle on my cutting mat

Unfortunately, neither of these methods seem to be entirely accurate--to the tune of 1mm on a 40cm hexagon.
Does anyone have a better method?

This usually works:
http://goorigami.com/wp-content/uploads/Hexagon.jpg
Don't know if it works exact enough on your scale through. Might be an interesting experiment. I have had great results on a bit smaller paper. Just use a folding bone to make sharp creases.
Hope this helps

I believe you can get hexagonal dies from craft suppliers that you can use as templates to cut your hexagons.

If a teeny hole in the middle is OK, you could try a compass to get those 60 degree angles.
I 've found folding to usually get me the same accuracy as you, I assume you start from the skinny edge of the strip on both sides rather than going a full circle around the paper?

One corner of the hexagon is the midpoint of the short edge, and those two adjacent sides form 30-60-90 triangles with the corners. The next two sides are along the long edges of the strip, and the last two meet along the midline once again.