Corrugation

1166: Year of the Snek

| wonko

Doom-scrolling on Insta, as you do, I came across an astonishing reel by Kimiro, featuring a new design for a snake resting on a branch.

I was determined to fold some version of this design, but knew I did not have the paper (large enough) or the patience for a 128 grid (with partial 256ths) grid-based scaled-shaped model. So I scaled down – working out the minimum size scale I could reasonably shape consistently, then working out how much of a 70cm square duo sheet of Kraft would be the snake.

The design is ingenious – an 8-grid strip down the diagonal of a square becomes the snake, the rest of the paper becomes the colour-changed branch. One consequence of re-scaling the snake was that the paper allocated to the branch diminished to barely protruding from the snake’s body – so I thought “fuck it” and tucked it inside (like the layers of waste paper in a Ryujin) to give the body bulk, allowing me to fashion a lower jaw and forked tongue.

Another consequence of re-factoring the snek was that it’s overall length is diminished to almost comic proportions. This little guy is a grower, not a shower, indeed.

Accepting that the project was cursed from the beginning (by my lack of commitment 😛 ) I decided to just go for it, treating the fold as an exercise in precision. Pre-creasing took an age, then scale collapse went smoothly. I then pre-creased all the scale-shaping also took an age, not nearly as long as the actual scale-shaping however. My Ryu Jin 3.5 PTSD returned at times, causing me to walk away from the project a few times.

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1163: Compleat II

| wonko

My second experiment in radial perpendicular pleating was based on a 30cm square of crispy Kraft paper, a regular 32 grid and a random number sequence:

I decided it would be interesting to see what happens when you use random numbers to control the collapse sequence for a micropleat corrugation based on a regular 32 grid of mountain folds. I typed “100 random numbers between 1 and 3” in google and blow me down but there was a website for that: https://numbergenerator.org/100randomnumbersbetween1and3

Each time you open that you get a new sequence. Mine was “3 2 3 1 2 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 3 3 3 2 1 1 3 2 3 1 1 1 3 3 1 1 3 1 1 2 1 2 3 3 1 2 3 3 1 3 1 2 1 3 2 2 1 2 3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 3 3 3 2 3 1 2 1 1 3 1 3 1 3 2 3 1 3 1 2”.

Starting on the pleat just down from the centre line (in retrospect I wish I had started with the centre line, but… meh), I used the first 3 mountains and laid in micropleats (partial 128ths) across the sheet as uniformly as my fat clumsy, nerve damaged fingers would let me. I then rotated the paper 90 degrees clockwise, crossed out the first number and used the second number to determine how many cross-sheet micropleats to lay in. Rinse and repeat to the edge of the sheet.

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