Wet Folding Paper Prep Calculator

MC concentration is a property of the sizing solution itself — how much methylcellulose powder is dissolved in the water, which is set purely by your chosen stiffness level (1.5%, 3.0%, or 5.0%) regardless of paper type. Dampening percentage is a separate output describing how wet you actually make the paper before folding, pulled from a lookup table keyed by both paper type and stiffness level, since a more absorbent paper needs more moisture to fold softly even at the same MC concentration.

MC concentration only depends on your stiffness choice because it's about how stiff the dried paper becomes, which is a property of the sizing itself, not the substrate. Dampening percentage climbs with absorbency (15-25% for low-absorbency Tant up to 30-60% for high-absorbency Mulberry) because thirstier paper can hold — and needs — more moisture to become pliable enough to sculpt without the surface immediately drying out mid-fold.

The formula (2 hours base + 1 hour per 15 percentage points of dampening) treats water content as the main driver of drying time, since it's the water evaporating that determines when the paper is dry — the dissolved MC powder itself doesn't meaningfully slow that process. This means two models with the same dampening level but different stiffness levels get the same drying-time estimate, even though the heavier-MC one will end up stiffer once fully dry.

Pick whichever of the four categories your paper's absorbency most closely resembles — coated or heavily sized papers behave like Tant (low absorbency), most commercial kami and Biotope-style papers sit in the medium range, artist watercolor stock is medium-high, and unsized handmade or mulberry fibers are high absorbency. The absorbency factors are practical estimates rather than measured values for any specific brand, so it's worth test-treating a scrap of your actual paper and adjusting the water ratio if it soaks up the solution noticeably faster or slower than expected.