The Origami Forum

Every time I want to cut out squares, I always rely on the fact that all the sides of the store-bought paper are perfectly perpendicular to each other. When I make tissue foil however, its nearly impossible to make sure they stay straight, so I just put another piece of paper (which has been cut out onto a square) onto the tissue foil and trace it out. This however, wastes a lot of paper.What method do you guys use? Preferably not with a compass, because that might shred the paper...and I hate geometry.

Wood stencils cut square at the building centre, a pencil, a sharp knife and a metal ruler are the things I use.

I use a method that works most of the time. First I "book" fold the nonsquare paper in half , then, I fold it in half the other way. Lastly, because I have two perpendicular edges, I can measure out the two lines I'll be cutting on. I hope this picture can help you more than my words (pardon my inadequate skills with paint).



And if this doesn't make a perfect square, I use a cutting board and rotary blade.

I assume the two opposite sides are perpendicular and the corners are at 90 degrees. Then I fold the two diagonals and cut where the diagonals intersect the edges...

try this:

A nice and simple method.
Thanks, jackie (-: