How To: Make A Super Sweet F-18 Out Of A Dollar Bill

This is one of those little tricks that is completely useless to know unless you are at a crowded restaurant, with friends, and the food is taking forever to arrive to the table. Then, suddenly, you can be the hero by pulling a couple bucks out of your wallet and entertaining everyone by folding up a few of these badboys.

These are especially fun to make if you’ve already mastered folding a regular paper airplane. The nature of these folds technically makes this a form of origami. Wow, this paper airplane is getting more sophisticated by the moment.

This model is based specifically on Elmer A. Norvell’s F-18. Elmer was an expert pilot and origami craftsman. He demonstrates how to make this model and seventeen others in his book entitled Airigami: Realistic Origami Aircraft. Of course, something about folding this out of a dollar bill makes it so much more interesting than doing it from just a piece of paper. According to YouTube, you can download the diagram for this fold here. This fold is not for the faint of heart. There are 14 steps and three videos to learn how to do this. It’s hard to believe with a little over 15 total minutes of video, he never says whether or not it actually flies. I guess there is only one way to find out!

Image Credit: [Steve Mann / Shutterstock]

COMMENTS