The Origami Forum

I have tons of 25cm square sheets of paper. I'm thinking about taping 4 together to get a 50cm square. Has anyone tried this? Does it work well? What kind of tape did you use and how does the tape crease?

I haven't tried it myself, but I imagine it could work fairly well.
Results would vary depending on what sort of tape you used too.
You should probably just try it out and see how you go.

Yeah, I'm going to try it anyway. I am mainly concerned about the type of tape and was wondering what others have tried and would recommend. Either way, I'm going to try it.

you could use spray adhesive and glue the squares together in an overlapping way. this should make the 50cm squares strong

It works all right, but scotch tape does not fold like paper. Be very careful taping though, as you need to make sure the edges are totally flush, and you really need to make sure the tape doesn't overlap, as that will be a death sentence for foldability. I would sometimes tape four 3 inch or 6 inch squares of foil together to make a larger square, which was okay. Not as good as the real thing, unless there were major pressure points along the tape seams. Then it was nice.

I think that taping paper together isn't a very smart thing to do. It causes the paper to be unevenly thick, and makes the middle of the paper thicker and harder to fold. Most kinds of tape won't fold as well as paper and taping papers together will usually create unsightly seams along the borders. It's usually better just to buy larger sheets of paper. What kind of paper are you using anyway?

If you have lots of paper to play with, doesn't sound like a big problem, except for the thickness, as angry demon said, and the fact that most tape will degrade after a few years.. But should be great for test models..

- Hank Simon

Also, keep in mind that you'll have to plan carefully in order to avoid ending up with a seam in a place where it'll look bad.

wow, i have to post a dissent. taping 4 pieces of kami together is a great, GREAT way to get a large piece of paper to practice a complex model. IMHO, it is EASIER than cutting out a perfect large square (no matter how careful i am, i'm always a few mm off, not to mention the cut edge is not always completely straight, which drives me insane). it is actually surprisingly easy to line up the edges and apply tape.

i couldn't imagine going through all the BS hassle of making tissue paper or double-tissue MC only to mess up a model. by comparison, taping together 4 pieces of kami is quick, if you mess up a model, no big deal. throw it away, start again, you can have another large piece of paper in less than 10 minutes. no need to worry about making a mess or getting high off glue spray.

of course, the end product is not likely something to be suitable for display, but again, for practicing super-complex models that require a large piece of paper, IMHO, it is an excellent solution.

how would you connect tissue paper? (10gsm)

With Methylcellulose. Lay some sheets next to each other, then lay a second row on top overlapping the gaps from the first sheets. Apply the MC and let it dry properly.

Thanks Anna, but doesn't that require 2 sheets of ntissue paper and be the same as double tissue paper?

Yes, but bigger than usual.
If you only want one layer you could try to slightly overlap the paper on the edges and apply the MC there making only a small area with two layers. Though I'm not sure if that works.

It does work. I'm currently trying to make large sheets of tissue paper. I do so by slightly overlapping the paper at the edges. The only downside is that you can see the strip where the paper overlaps quite clearly due to the thinness of the paper.

Actually, I was successful in folding Marc's Biplane doing that. I took the aluminum foil, overlapped it, taped it together. Then I used a big sheet of tissue paper. Although the sheet was only 44 centimeters long, so I'm not sure about larger paper.