The Origami Forum

What is the best gsm for origami? what is the gsm of standard origami paper for example?

i'm sorry, what is gsm?

gsm is "grams per square meter", so if you have a120gsm paper that is 1 meter by 1 meter, it would weigh 120 grams (metric).

Canson art paper is in the region of about 120gsm and good for wet-folding.
I find that 80gsm is great for multi-layered models, but it is hard to find in large paer and colours. Your printer paper will be about 80gsm. The thinner letter paper is about 60gsm, and also hard to find in larger sizes.

Which brings me to another question.
if paper weight is in metric units, but here in North America they still use inches and the "other" measurement unit, how is paper weight defined here?

And then another question. how to make a dollar bill from a A4 size (metric size) paper, which (I think) has different proportions to the "letter" sizes they use here?

I believe it is grams per square meter. This is a difficult question to, there is no one easy answer, it really depends on what you are trying to fold, each model requires a specific type of paper that best suits it. You can use other papers, but with not quite as spectacular results. The best rule of thumb is, use thick papers for wetfolding, and thinner papers if you ae not. Insects however, and anything on the complex side of the scale will need very thin paper, wetfolding or not. Sorry I can't be more specific but it is not an easy question to answer.

Andrew

Here in the USA we use an insane method to calculate paper weight. Standard "letter" size paper is 8.5x11 inches, slightly shorter and fatter than A4. A4 paper isn't easy to come by around here (medium sized city), I've found it once at an office supply store, but most people have never heard of it.
http://www.edsebooks.com/paper/grammage.html
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html (near the bottom)

The U.S. paper industry has managed to come up with a truly bizarre way of specifying the density of paper. Instead of providing you with the obvious quotient of mass per area (e.g., in grams per square meter, ounces per square yard, whatever), they specify the total mass M of a ream of N pages of some size X×Y. This means, you have to know four (!) values in order to understand how to calculate the (scalar) density of the paper. For example “20 lb paper” can mean that a ream of 500 pages in format 24×36 in has a total mass of 20 pounds. These ream sizes of 500 × 24 in × 36 in = 278.70912 m² are somewhat typical in newsprint applications but not universal, as 17×22 in, 25×38 in and other reference sheet sizes are used as well! With 453.59237 g/lb and 278.70912 m²/ream, we get roughly 1 lb/ream = 1.63 g/m² for this particular ream size.

Oh, and in addition to the paper weights that have been mentioned so far, I also like to use lokta paper that is around 60gsm and I also backcoat two sheets of 20gsm mulberry tissue together for some models.

And then another question. how to make a dollar bill from a A4 size (metric size) paper, which (I think) has different proportions to the "letter" sizes they use here?

I usually just get a bill and trace. I can get 4 bills on one letter sheet. Or you can always measure out 2.61 by 6.14 inches.

So what is the gsm for standard packaged origami paper? I am looking at this website's textured paper page:

http://www.papermojo.com/unryupaper.htm

there are interesting papers there that vary from 30 gsm to 100 gsm...so i'm trying to gauge what standard origami paper's gsm is in comparison to what those papers are.

To make a dollar bill shape from any silver rectangle, just make a square from the rectangle the usual way and save the leftover strip. That strip is very very close the the proportions of a dollar bill.

There are many different kinds of "standard" packaged Origami paper.
The thinner one in boxes of I think 60 different colours with some foilpaper sheets inside that you can order nearly everywhere feels as if it would be around 60 gsm (just a guess). The thicker one that you can get at nearly every stationary store has 75 gsm.
Tissue paper usually has around 20gsm. My favourite Origami paper that is two layers of tissue paper glued together with MC therefore has around 40 gsm. Printer paper usually has 80 gsm but there are thicker ones available up to 120 gsm. Elefant hide is available in the same gsm values like printer paper.
If you want to order handmade papers it would probably be good to order some samples first (Often sample catalogues are available). Origami paper is not only defined by gsm but also by its crispness and ability to hold creases. Many handmade papers have inserts (thick fibres) that make it hard to fold even if the paper itself is very thin.
When ordering paper you have to find the best for your own needs. You will need thick and strong paper for boxes, thin and crisp paper for insects, paper with a bit of structure for modulars (that helps locking them together). The size of the paper is also important, you can take a thicker sheet if you make a larger model and a thinner one for a small one.

malachi wrote:Here in the USA we use an insane method to calculate paper weight. Standard "letter" size paper is 8.5x11 inches, slightly shorter and fatter than A4. A4 paper isn't easy to come by around here (medium sized city), I've found it once at an office supply store, but most people have never heard of it.

Thats amazing in britian A4 is the most common paper to find, it's everywhere

malachi wrote: A4 paper isn't easy to come by around here (medium sized city), I've found it once at an office supply store, but most people have never heard of it.

OH MY GOD!! What kind of upside-down parallel dimension do you live in?? Do the people in your office chisel out their documents on stone tablets?

dragon man wrote: Thats amazing in britian A4 is the most common paper to find, it's everywhere

Yeah, in North America, that's typically referred to as "that weird European paper" (if anyone's even heard of it). The standard paper size here is 8.5"x11" (letter), with the only other common one being 8.5"x14" (legal), even here in Canada, which is mostly metric. I think the only time I've seen or used A4 paper was in my last job, where I developed software that had an international client base, and we had one package of A4 for testing: every once in a while something wouldn't print properly for our European clients because the paper was the "wrong" size. I have no idea where they got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a special order.

Letter is just another standard and the people in north America are used to it. But take it the other way round, if you go to a paper shop in Europe and ask for letter sized paper most people won't even know what you are talking about, it is just as unusual as A4 in the USA.
It's the same with inches and centimetres, ones you are used to one system you wouldn't believe that there are people living well with another system, but that's how it is and it is working for both parties.

origami_8 wrote:Letter is just another standard and the people in north America are used to it. But take it the other way round, if you go to a paper shop in Europe and ask for letter sized paper most people won't even know what you are talking about, it is just as unusual as A4 in the USA.
It's the same with inches and centimetres, ones you are used to one system you wouldn't believe that there are people living well with another system, but that's how it is and it is working for both parties.

The difference in both cases is that the international standard is better in most ways, but most Americans just don't want to change. "A" ratio paper has some nice properties that letter size paper just doesn't have.