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Glue for finishing and preserving tessellations

Posted: September 27th, 2021, 7:44 pm
by lucynoodles20
I know that this is unorthodox, but I am looking for a glue/adhesive that I can use to treat a finished tessellation. I am using these for the side panels of hand crafted lamps (https://imgur.com/SngsXK8). I'm thinking some sort of acid-free spray adhesive might work. Does anyone have recommendations?

More details on what I've tried so far (skip reading this if you like). So far, I have made two and a half lamps.
  • The first one was made from rice paper (similar to mulberry paper) with no treatment. It is nice, but fragile. The cats have knocked it a couple times and I had to fix the origami
  • The second one was rice paper treated with methyl cellulose AFTER the folding. The process for that is to make methyl cellulose solution, spread it on one side of the paper, place the paper on a sheet of glass/plastic/plexiglass and get it flat, then spread the other side with MC. I put the MC solution under pleats as well. This way, it effectively acted as a glue as well as a stiffener. It comes out looking more crisp and is more durable.
  • I am using Tant paper for the third lamp. I treated one side panel with MC, and it didn't work as well as it did with the rice paper. The paper peeled up from the plexiglass sheet as it was drying, and developed wrinkles. And it didn't adhere as well, probably because the Tant paper already has MC or something similar mixed in.
  • I have elephant hide and a thin foil paper that I want to use for future lamps. It would be good if someone could recommend things that work for elephant hide, foil paper, and/or Tant

Re: Glue for finishing and preserving tessellations

Posted: October 5th, 2021, 11:45 pm
by Gerardo
That looks really cool! Unfortunately I don't know what would be the best glue for your project. If no one answers here, you could try Quora.

Best of luck with your project!

Re: Glue for finishing and preserving tessellations

Posted: October 6th, 2021, 4:36 pm
by Baltorigamist
My first suggestion would have been to use methylcellulose, but I see you’ve already tried that.
My second is to try using PVA, which is essentially diluted white glue, on the paper before and after folding the tessellation. I don’t know if you want a more transparent paper or an opaque one, but mulberry paper (specifically unryu) works really well and is also somewhat translucent.
I wouldn’t recommend using Tant with methylcellulose—as you’ve found out already, it doesn’t work very well. It might work with PVA, but I’ve never tried it myself. Elephant hide might work with PVA as well—perhaps better than Tant—but again, I haven’t tried it. Foil won’t generally work with any kind of glue.
Another option is to try some kind of clear resin coating on the finished model if your goal is durability.

In the end, which adhesive to use depends on what kind of paper you’re using. PVA is generally more applicable than methylcellulose (that is, it works on more kinds of paper), so more experimentation might be the best course of action at the moment.