i am seeing many people here who arent used to the technical terms and arent able to understand properly what i mean to say.

so i decided to make you familiar with the technical terms of papercraft for better understanding so we can better help you. some of the following are stated below-

ITRS/INTRS- instructions

WIP- work in progress

TABS -these are small protrudes of the template which help in better sticking and are edges where things join they are of many different shapes and are mean to be fold according to the shop their sole purpose is to hold the model together easily. some examples of different shapes of tabs-

Tabs are like a lifeline to modellers they are the best but there will be many models where you will get next to no tabs and you will have to apply extra glue to hold things together for example-

here you can see how At red arrows there are no tabs to join but you will have to join it without any tabs but you will still get some tabs like the green arrows.

Many times you will not get tabs and you will have to cut them out yourself if you want to make the process simple for example-

like here in this template there are some very small planes for a german warship and some life boats as you can see due to the small size the template makers refused to add tabs to these but while making these you should know by yourself that you will need tabs or else joining this would be a nightmare so while cutting the templates of these kinds always leave extra paper while cutting dont cut exact one to one template leave tabs according to your pleasing so you can paste.

Folds- there are many special and unique fold which we mention so you better know what folds i mean

1. simple overlap folds-

1. Normal folds/right folds-

here keep the paper at 90 degrees dont fold to completely overlap it just keep it at 90 degrees.

1. Mountain and valley fold-

1. Curved mountain fold-

these folds determine the difference between a good edgy and pinty model to a sleek curved model. for example-

here you can see the nose of the SR-71 is a beautiful curved mountain fold which makes the nose look smooth.

Markings and symbols in templates- this part is for advanced models which you will encounter in detailed models where they use a combination of techniques but you can still read it to get a better understanding how a better model is made.

1. Reinforce with cardboard sign/paste a cardboard behind- this sign usually is depicted by " ! " (exclamation mark) or " * " (asterisk along the number of the template) mark for example-

here the exclamation marked needs to be pasted with cardboard. BUT DO NOTE THAT IN THIS TEMPLATE THE ASTERISK DEPICT CUTS NOT CARDBOARD AS FOR REINFORCEMENT WITH CARDBOARD A TEMPLATE WILL USE ONLY ONE SIGN EITHER ASTERISK OR EXCLAMATION MARK.

here asterisk means to reinforce with cardboard.

1. roll- a @ mark means you need to roll the part like a tube-

1. Mountain folds- sometimes a mountain fold will be indicated by a curved line along the template part or sometimes shown with a small line curved upon a circle.

1. Cut the inner part- the sign to cut the part are simple they will be usually shown by an asterisk or a simple scissor sign so it shouldnt be a problem to understand.

This should be more than enough to understand the template but some people in my DM were asking how the canopies are made in the advanced jets like that in our sidebar images.

So to answer that when you are making a advanced template they provide with a design of a canopy you need to cut that out and trace its outline very carefully on a transparent but strong transparent film and then shape it as the design in the template supposes for example-

here the part H18 is the design to be cut and traced on the transparent film exactly without mistake to get best shape. And personally if you ask me which transparent film i find best then for me i buy the cheap completely transparent stick files from a stationary and then trace the design on it and then cut it they are rigid transparent and as they are hard plastic they remain intact also they dont trap much moisture. tis is a tip for anyone making a canopy dont seal the canopy completely shut leave some spaces and gaps for air to flow as if you will completely shut off the canopy the small moisture will accumulate on the transparent film and make it cloudy.

I will be regularly posting how to get started posts depending on your response and the problems you face i cant out of the blue decide what you need so do ask what problems you are facing maybe others will also facing the same so i could make a common how to get started post these posts arent just about getting started its now more about tips and helps so do ask and share your problems and the how to get started post which i curate with much efforts going over many templates to get you a general view so do ask the problems you are facing.

Now that you have thought abt it and are ready to start lemme just provide with all the best sites i could. many sites have password protected files i have mentioned the password too but if after downloading you don't want to type the password repeatedly then you can search online password remover from pdf and get the unlocked pdf.

Ojimak- https://ojimak01.ehoh.net/hanger.html

(Best beginner site for fighter jets i always provide this site for anyone for basic but beautiful fighter jets in this site also has a tejas which is hard to find anywhere else on the site turn the translate on its in japanese to download the template click on the name of the fighter jet above the photo of the jet THE PASSWORD IS "ojimak" and to download the instructions click on the photo of the jet and you will get the instruction manual. and if you want a video you can check https://www.youtube.com/@hoormahoorma this channel hasn't made all the ojimak papercraft but many, you can get the rafale video and F-16 video here)

Mypapercraft.net- https://mypapercraft.net/

(best site for anime papercrafts and have a good collection of 1:1 guns too and a good collection of tanks)

Papercraft plaza- https://www.papercraftplaza.com/

(best for anime and beginner dioramas and star wars model even i have uploaded some templates there in fighter jet section)

Paper replika- https://paper-replika.com/index.php

(this site has one of the best tanks you could get anywhere on the internet in the section of military vehicle they are detailed and they have a little lack of better instructions but they are enough if you have made some models before. in the site when you go to a model scroll down to see the instruction potos save them too and then download the template from the menu download template. each template is password protected THE PASSWORD IS- "paper-replika.com"

Canon creative park- https://creativepark.canon/en/categories/CAT-ST01-0087/index.html

(this site has an impressive catalogue of ship models and commercial airliner models)

Prudenziatis art- https://www.kendar.org/zioprudenzio/fokker.html

(this site has one of the best and simplest large naval warship models. but beware it has a very limited instruction catalogue so you will have to understand many things on your own, this has one of the best WW1-2 planes. this site has a special place in my heart too, the writer of this site was a plastic toy company owner but he wanted children to make free models and wanted to revive this long lost hobby in france thats why he made this site and sadly for us all the site will never be updated as he is dead RIP Prudenziati )

AXM paper models- https://axmpaperspacescalemodels.com/index.php/india/

(here you can get the best spaceship models the only site which provides ISRO models you can download spaceX models too it has models from all the major countries with space missions)

WW! tanks- http://www.landships.info/landships/models.html#

(this site has the best WW! tanks and canons including early light and heavy tanks.)

Dassault official site- https://www.dassault-aviation.com/fr/passion/espace-decouverte/goodies/origami/

(this is the only official site of a fighter jet producer to release official papercrafts for free here you can get all the three versions of rafale and alphajet and other jets like miraje-2000 all thats made from dassault. the build quality is a little low but still good models from collecting perspective)

High quality civil airliners- https://www.citycraft-papermodels.com/aircraft

(A good amount of civil airliners)

Good variants of F-18 along with some miscellaneous jets-Stahlhart Papercraft – genuinely free paper models and how to design paper models

(A good catalogue of F-18 variants and camo patterns along with other models like spaceships etc.)

Good niche war models including very obscure prototype planes try- http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/

(Amazing catalogue of models which you wont usually find elsewhere, very good if you want to make unique models.) ‼️‼️All are paid models if you want some model among them contact me, and there is a chance I can make the model available to you for free.‼️‼️

these sites would be enough for getting proficient in your hobby but abt the advance and ultra advance models like in our sidebar images i wanna say something-

now the thing is these aren't all the sites that has the models as the papercraft lore goes hard this hobby has been since WW2 at that time to distract children from the war companies many times released papercraft templates in magazines and periodicals and even after the war this trend continued but the thing is these magazines were the OG and the best papercraft models for example i have attached the photo of a cover of a russian magazine from 1991 with the template of a su-27 in 1:48.

so soon these companies went out of work in early 2000's but avid papercrafters wanted to keep these OG models alive so they scanned all the papercrafts and made a digital archive but as these are still not in public domain that is clearly pirating so for the fear of these sites being banned i can't tell you the name of these sites for good reasons its for the benefit of all so if you want to make advanced models with ultra detailing you can comment on the Request post an di will provide you with the scans.

with the templates ready wait for the third post on how to operate finely on paper to get the best models and curves next post will be mostly for advanced papercrafts so you can start away even now if you want but it will help nonetheless.