Fold With Me is a free collection of illustrated making guides, starting with paper airplanes.
All 4 tutorials include materials, original English instructions, complete illustrations and interactive guides. Basic Dart uses folds only; the cut-and-fold glider and bird require cutting. Paper Bird also requires two pins and covering tape, with adult pin handling. Ring-wing is a fold-and-roll guide with optional tape.
No account or payment is needed. The collection focuses on making the models, without flight rankings or performance claims.
The first three guides reconstruct or adapt historical editions. Ring-wing references a modern NASA/JPL educational activity. Authors are credited for their publications, not asserted to be the inventors of these designs. Each tutorial identifies its dimensions and teaching choices separately.
Edward Verrall Lucas and Elizabeth Lucas, What Shall We Do Now? A Book of Suggestions for Children’s Games and Employments (1904), pp. 233.
Letter paper and a 90° reopening of each wing are modern reconstruction choices, not dimensions or angles specified by the book.
Open source ↗A. Frederick Collins, The Magic of Science: A Book of Scientific Amusements (1917), pp. 103–104.
The original labels the 8-inch span, 2-inch wing depth, 6-inch body segment, 3-inch tail depth and 3-inch body root, and asks for four leading-edge folds. It does not number the tail span, narrow body end or fold spacing. This adaptation specifies a 4-inch tail span, 1-inch narrow end and four ¼-inch roll folds. These are new construction parameters, not recovered historical dimensions.
Open source ↗Tudor Jenks, “About Flying-Machines,” St. Nicholas, Vol. XXIII, No. 6, April 1896 (1896), pp. 445.
The original requests writing paper about 8 × 4 inches, the pictured bird outline, a flat V along AC, and two pins near the head at B. Internal outline coordinates, two 15° half-wing bends (150° included V), approximately 1-inch pins and covered/secured points are modern teaching choices. Tape is an added precaution, not an original material. The historical illustration is not a dimensioned plan.
Open source ↗NASA/JPL Education, Make a Paper Glider (updated November 5, 2024), construction steps 2–3.
Uses the Letter rectangle’s corner-to-corner diagonal and the ½-inch rim from the official template/activity. Corner letters, separate preparation and checking steps, diagram viewpoints and colors are our teaching choices. The source gives no required overlap length: insert only enough to hold the join, keeping the rim circular. No flight experiments are included.
Open source ↗Fold With Me’s instructions, diagrams and code were newly produced with AI assistance. Historical scans and the Ring-wing template/photos were checked as references, not bundled into the site. Finished-model illustrations show the intended tutorial outcomes; they are not photographs of physical models. NASA, JPL and Caltech did not author, review or endorse this guide and are not responsible for its accuracy.
They show the intended paper shapes, moving layers and sequence. Cutting, accessory placement, curling and tucked joins are labeled schematics. Numerical checks cover the original three constructions and Ring-wing’s animated folding and continuous curl. Ring-wing also retains its authored static illustrations. Browser checks cannot prove that a person can follow a guide successfully.
None of these tutorials has been tested in a real-paper follow-along. Paper thickness, contact, collisions and exact visibility of overlapping layers are not simulated. A4 compatibility is not claimed.
The public-domain assessment concerns only the specific historical editions in the United States. It does not cover modern websites or guarantee rights in every country. Ring-wing has its own source and media-policy notes; no NASA/JPL logos, photographs or template artwork are reproduced. No overall license for this project's code, text or media has been selected. Public preview access is not a blanket reuse license.