God Of Papercraft Builds Working Organ Used For Own Adulation

There’s a wide world to explore when it comes to papercraft, but we reserve special praise for fully functional builds. [Aliaksei Zholner’s] working papercraft organ is a stunning example of what can be achieved with skill and perseverance.

The video is short but covers some finer touches – the folded concertinas of paper acting as springs to return the keys, for example. Air is supplied by a balloon, and the organ has a tone similar to other toy organs of comparable size.

The builder has declined to share templates at this stage, due to the complexity of the model and the fact that apparently even the thickness of the paper used can affect the function. This is not surprising — to get any sort of pipe organ to play in tune requires finesse and careful fine tuning. The build thread sheds some further light on the build (in Russian) if you’re curious to know more.

Perhaps the one thing we find surprising is that we haven’t seen something similar that’s 3D printed. If you’ve done it, smash it through on the tip line! Else, if you’re thirsty for more functional papercraft, you can’t go past the fantastic papercraft strandbeest build we covered back in 2011.

10 thoughts on “God Of Papercraft Builds Working Organ Used For Own Adulation

  1. Not a first, I’ve seen a pic of a paper organ-player on the web. It was commercial I think. When is paper…cardboard? It would take some stiffness to get a column of paper to resonate and not be damped by soft flexible sides. A balloon is rather high wind pressure to blow pipes, try a giant weather balloon. Something that is easy to blow up in the first place will then blow with the same level back to the organ. Paper bellows and wind reservoir is not that hard to do. Rubber bands will do on the reserve.

      1. That is such a tired comeback, man.
        As a person who very very rarely takes time to document their projects that I am building for my own amusement, I find it weird that people need to document 80% of their lives on a daily basis. Most things I build get seen by the wife, the cat, the client, and maybe a friend or two.
        That being said I did enjoy this paper craft organ immensely.

  2. Impressive! Although i dont believe their main reason for not posting the templates due to “complexity”, theres gotta be much harder projects that share how to build it. Its possible that they just didnt make any templates and just built it as they went.

    And I would know that trying to make templates from already made projects can be a pain in the butt to do, since you’ll have to take apart projects that may be glued together and try to scan and recreate them.

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