vehicle

243: Cessna Plane

| wonko

I have had this model, described via hand-drawn diagrams for ages and thought it a good one to finish the month with:

This is a tidy little plane, named Cessna after the style of modern single engine aircraft it is modeled on. I am not, however, sure who the designer is – can anyone enlighten me?

A clever use of the bird base with some ingenious accordion pleating to liberate the wings and some interesting pucker pleating to form tail and propeller, there is some very dense folding to shape the fusilage and a cute domed cover for the cockpit, even some vestigial landing gear underneath.

Happy with this as a first fold, can see myself trying to refine it so it is tidier – am sure I could tease some wheels and maybe master the propeller a little better in subsequent folds.

242: Trainset

| wonko

Now when I was a kid I did not have a trainset – you know, one of those Hornsby jobbies with the locomotive, carriages and transformer-powered track:

Not sure if I actually wanted one, but there you go – I had friends who did, right down to the chemical you put a drop of in the smokestack to generate puffs of steam in a (from a kids eye perspective at least) realistic way.

This is a set of folds based on the same box-pleating trick, and really there is little to stop you making a whole swagger of types of carriages using it – I made 3 variations but can imagine more. An interesting cross pleat and collapse was used (in some cases many times) in each model, useful to remember.

Although these are technically separate models, I present them as one as they would, individually, be uninspiring.

194: Messerschmitt

| wonko

I have been invited to a 4-person dogfight match tonight and thought a plane wold be the best model for the job, so found a rather nice Messerschmitt BF 109K:

With relatively few folds a lovely propeller-based warplane emerges from a flat sheet. I like this model a lot (so much so that I folded 4 of them – thought each of the “pilots” in tonight’s game might like one as a memento of the battle)

Nice fat fuselage, three blades on the propeller, cockpit and nice tail-plane, if anything the wings are a little short but given how they are gathered from the sheet they are good as they are.

189: Roller

| wonko

Now in posh car circles, a Rolls Royce is called a “Roller” – how do I know this? Well, I don’t, but that is what it is called on the telly. I am going driving today, so thought I would do it in style (at least in my head):

A tortured and fiddly design that hints at a sort of grandeur (notice the grille and fancy flaring of this boxy, limo-type body).

When I casually regarded this model I thought “yeah, that should only take a few minutes” but in reality it took me an age which meant I was late setting out for my long drive – I did not account for the poor diagramming and almost random steps half-way in or the annotations in colloquial French – you get that.

In truth, I would not really enjoy this sort of car – too frightened to drive it unless someone dinged it, unable to pay for servicing etc – I like my little zippy car that runs on the smell of an oily mechanic.

162: A Train and Carriages

| wonko

wow, no I mean WOW! I saw this box-pleating exercise and initially put it in the “yeah, prolly not” pile, but dug it out after I found a roll of nice butcher’s paper and wondered how it would fold:

Train carriages, engine complete with smokestack and lovely billow of smoke – far my favourite vehicle to date

An exercise in eighths with a 10×1 rectangle, each square initially divided in 8 horizontally and vertically, then collapse, pleat and crimp from there. The paper was 1m long and 10cm wide, meaning the smallest crimps were 5mm, making it lucky I have a bone folder really as my fat fingers were hopelessly inadequate.

I really like this one, proportions and technique. I added a “crumple” to the smoke – I think it works well. Must investigate crumpling (a real origami movement, some lovely stuff there also).

You too can have a go: train

Should I decide fold it again I would go longer – add another carriage and a caboose at the end. Quite chuffed with it, although it was not really that complicated, just a bit of planning prior to folding. You may applaud politely now, thank you.