Abstract As fiber and bond characterization tools become more sophisticated, the information from the fiber scale becomes richer. This information is used for benchmarking of different types of fibers by the paper and packaging industries. In this work, we have addressed a question about the effect of variability in the fiber and fiber bond properties on the average stiffness and strength of fiber networks. We used a fiber-scale numerical model and reconstruction algorithm to address this question. The approach was verified using the experimental sheets having fiber data acquired by a fiber morphology analyzer and corrected by microtomographic analysis of fibers in these sheets. We concluded, among other things, that it is sufficient to account for the average bond strength value with an acceptable number of samples to describe dry network strength, as long as the bond strength distribution remains symmetric. We also found that using the length-weighted average for fiber shape factor and fiber length data neglects the important contribution from the distribution in these properties on the mechanical properties of the sheets.