How to fold the world record paper airplane

a couple of years ago when I broke the world record for distance for paper airplanes I made a promise that I was going to post the instructions for that paper airplane right here on this YouTube channel the time has come and I'm also starting a brand new series of videos based on the new world champion paper airplane book and the classics the fantastic flight and gliding flight books so here we go without further ado the folding instructions for the best paper airplane in the world Suzanne we're gonna take the top and put it against the side and if you're going for any kind of competition this time let's get a little more serious we're gonna use the folding tool we're gonna really nail that crease this is our folding bone that you saw in the getting started video unfold that we're gonna make a diagonal fold the other direction and incidentally I'm holding the paper so that it just stays you know Square to the camera you might want to spin this around as you're making these creases it might be sort of awkward for you to do this but feel free to move the paper around I'm I'm just doing this for the camera so you can make sense of the direction of papers oriented you know a lot of times I'll spin it around as well okay so now we've got nice sharp creases going through the paper it's an X we're gonna take one side and lay it against the crease I'm gonna zoom in here now and show you that I am just leaving a little bit of space I'm gonna shut one of the lights off so you can kind of see this better I'm leaving just a little bit of space about a millimeter and a half maybe two millimeters at the most between that edge and the crease you can kind of see that there I turn the other light on the lighting becomes a little bit too flat you can't really make it out but I'm leaving just a little breathing room there so that when you start folding layers over each other again they won't bunch up you want everything to lay nice and flat you want the sharpest configuration you can on this and if I back back out you can see that I'm just laying that whole edge right against the X there making a really sharp crease gonna unfold that and we're gonna do the same thing to this side put that side right against this other diagonal crease here and again I'm leaving the same amount I left before try to be precise with that you know if you've got a millimeter on the other side go go back the same amount on this side go a millimeter on this side as well you know if you ended up at two millimeters on the other side go two millimeters here symmetry is the main thing you want those layers to be you know flat and you want them to be exactly the same configuration so there we go we've taken made a diagonal fold that way this way taking these guys to the diagonal and now we're gonna leave this one folded this time fold over the top there it doesn't really matter which one you put over the top of the other one that's not a problem and now we're gonna fold right straight down too long just so that we meet this corner right here we're going to fold the top down I'm going to zoom in a little bit here and we're gonna you can line these edges up here you want this crease here to line up with the crease just below here so you want it to be one continuous line as it goes along here and so you'll be just just to the side of this raw edge here this Riots that we left just short you're gonna be just on the other side of that and you're gonna be lined up with the creases now you'll notice when you do that you start to get bubbling here what you want to do is try to press this as flat as you can as you make this crease so that the wings will lie even more flat than before now if you folded the you know the other plane that was really just kind of fun with a locking fold on it that required no tape we didn't really go this slowly here but you can see I'm going slowly now I'm lining up all the creases we're getting serious we're making a plane that's really going to win some contest here so now we're going to follow this crease and we're gonna unfold that and then we're gonna follow this crease and we're gonna unfold that now why would I do that well you can see that we haven't made the center crease on the plane yet and now when I fold these together the layers will bunch at exactly the same rate and now I can leave those guys together and I'll flip this around and fold it in half and I'll nail the front edge here and then I'll start to get this rear edge going here and it's really more important once you kind of get the nose nail to get this rear corner back here just perfect you want to get that totally lined up and then nail your crease and then at this point you want to go over the whole plane with this folding bone and sharpen these creases really important to sharpen this leading edge here let me zoom in here and show you what I'm doing now the way that I'm doing this I'm going from where these layers meet right here and raking down toward the nose that is really important you want to you don't want to rake back this way yet if you do you'll fall off this edge here and you can put a hole in the wing right there so press pretty hard raking forward down the nose flip it over and do that again rake really hard right down the nose and and again you want to start just downstream of where the layers end here you can kind of do you a Braille myth it kind of hang on to it right there and rake down like that yet you want to flatten everything this crease right here on the bottom of the plane make sure that's nice and flat make sure we're flat here make sure the fuselage fold is flat I'll just rotate a little bit so I can just sweep straight down everything wants to be really crisp really crisp big key to making a competition plane now we're gonna make wing folds and oh it's just it's I don't know why I do it this way but I always start with the nose pointed to the left and I do this wing first which is actually going to be the left wing of the plane so I always start with very close to the nose right about here and then I keep an eye on this raw edge right here and we're gonna roll that over so the raw edge just just kisses that corner it's just gonna be right there now I'm doing something that's not obvious here I'm using my thumb as I roll that over to bunch these layers up here so that this top layer can't slide if I go like that see how that top layer can just slide away we don't want that that's bad news so you want to hold that with your thumb or another finger hang on to that keep an eye on that and we're starting really close to the nose not you don't have to be right on the nose you can give yourself a little bit of space there and roll that over just so that raw edge just touches the corner there's the corner and we're just just touching the corner that's how you get your wing fold consistent every time that's the marker right there and we're not gonna make this we're not going to crease this edge yet we're gonna do that in just a minute first we're gonna flip this over make sure that our layers are nice and clean they're kind of lean on that from this side now we're gonna break over right here you can have a look at that make sure you're breaking over at the right place I can use my thumb to just kind of make sure that that's happening on the right point there lay it back down and then start to roll that over and again we want these layers to line up perfectly on the wings here we want the wings to match just perfectly most important thing on a competition plane you're gonna throw very hard is that these creases right here meet precisely in the same place fractions of a millimeter count at the tail of the plane if that's off at all right there that's bad news so you want that to be very very precise it just needs to feel like one sheet of paper at the back of the plane okay now we're starting to get kind of that wing shape that we want and I'm gonna bring in my clip device here my bag clip I'm just gonna clip that on there and we can kind of see what this what this plane is starting to look like and when we do final adjustments here this front of the plane is going to be have a really shallow dihedral angle and these wing tips are gonna rake up more and it's starting to happen there you can kind of see it's starting to rake up as it goes toward the tail of the plane that's exactly what you want okay and it'll do that naturally if you just kind of just kind of flex the middle of it a little bit and don't flex the front too much you can press the front down just a touch and flex up in the middle here and kind of get that dynamic dihedral angle going it's kind of a curvy kind of cool kind of swept looking wing you

Channel: ThePaperAirplaneGuy

Views: 10,315,749

Keywords: world record, paper airplane, how to fold, world record distance, best paper airplane, John Collins

Id: EDiC9iMcWTc

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 01 2014