refold

Black Forest Cuckoo Clock

| wonko

Looking through my resident model collection, I realised I no longer had a rendition of Robert Lang’s “Black Forest Cuckoo Clock”:

I had previously folded this model with regular mono-colour thin crispy Kraft paper, but that model was part of a WTF competition, won by Sebastian Limet in France, who became the owner of it.

I decided to try a presentation fold, using a lovely black/natural Kraft paper I have a few rolls of (remnants of a purchase from IKEAA, back when they stocked it). The model EATS paper like anything, the sheet you fold it from is in the proportions of 10:1, so I decided to go 3.2m x 0.32m which introduced a serious problem – materials handling of such large media requires planning and a strategy.

Pre-creasing was achieved using Lang’s suggested “measure major landmarks” as opposed to gridding it all up and then folding from that grid (the method I used last time). Apparently the benefit of the “measure”?” method is no extra folds on visible surfaces (as opposed to a residual grid).

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Lang’s “Green Tree Frog”

| wonko

Good paper is such a blessing. I took a long-stored square of olive Vietnamese Dó paper and attempted to fold a “Temple Dragon” – got most of the way through and realised the paper was too small/thick to complete it. Rather than bin the model, I carefully unfolded it, ironed it flat and … the paper had a new life:

Folding paper can damage it – wood-fibre-based paper takes damage (I call it paper fatigue) because the folding process can break the fibres along the crease. SOME paper has strong, flexible fibres that bend but mostly do not break, and Dó paper (made from bark of the Rhamnoneuron balansae tree) is astonishingly resilient.

The colour reminded me of something, as a kid, I used to see all the time – green tree frogs. Naturally I returned to Robert Lang’s “Origami Design Secrets” and re-folded his Green Tree Frog – I no longer had in my stored folds a copy of this lovely model so figured it was time.

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