Lokhu Paper Review

Folding Twist Again Tessellation was an opportunity to test Lokhu paper. It shares many characteristics, both good and bad, with Lokta, and even the name is similar.

As with Lokta, I liked the look of the paper, but hated working with it. The paper was too soft for this model and making precise precreases as well as reversing folds was difficult. In contrast to hand-made Lokta, this is a machine-made paper and one with a huge difference when folding with and against the grain. The difference was both in bending resitance and in how difficult it was to reverse a crease (it was much worse in the parallel direction). This difference also made diagonal creases hard to fold precisely as the paper tended to lead the crease off the intended direction. On the up-side, I like the look of this slightly glossy paper with lots of visible fibers. Folding this copper-colored sheet made me think of mammoth fur. The texture also hides precreases rather well which makes folding harder but makes the finished model look better. Collapsing the tessellation was hard, due in part to the lack of stiffness and in part to this paper’s tendency to unfold. I had to put a lot of effort (long-term dry shaping) into making this model stay flat and not try to unfold.

Overall, this is an interesting paper with nice looks, but seems to be a poor choice for tessellations. It might on the other hand be well suited for animals or similar models. I haven’t checked its wet-folding behavior.