Most factory and kites built by enthusiast have rip stop nylon skins, some have Icarex which is an extremely light weight fabric. These days most modern factory made kites are made with fibreglass rod, tube or for high performance kites, carbon fibre rods or tubes. Long before that, kites were only made with natural materials. The skin was usually made of cotton, nylon, paper or plastic. Up to 40 years ago, kites were built with wood dowels, bamboo and other natural materials. One of the kites survived 59 knot winds without much damage so these kites built by Mike Richard are very robust. It is the same type used on sails for tears. We occasionally need to make repairs and insignia, sticky backed repair cloth is invaluable. Mike Richard's construction has proved very robust. Spar ends have caps to prevent the sharp ends from punching through the spar pockets. Reinforced stress points such as spar ends and bridle attachment points are vital for the kite to survive high winds and the occasional crash. The seams and spar pockets are sewn with heavy grade sewing thread reserved for tents, tarpaulins and back packs. We are careful to align the weft and weave of the cloth to maximise lift and minimise cloth stretch. This hot cutting melts then seals the cloth and ensures accurate cuts and exact replication when building several other kites. The cloth is then hot cut with an electric knife using the template. The weave of the cloth is parallel to the trailing edge of the wings to minimise stretch and fraying. The central section is a large rectangle by cutting two rectangles and joining them. It can then be used to cut 4 triangles which are then joined. The wings on our record kites are equilateral triangles so a template is made with a triangle half the wing size. If it is a one off construct then a template is not required. The next step is to make a 3 ply template of the panels with seam allowances. Rubber cement or epoxy can be used if a permanent join is required. Fibreglass spars must be joined with solid ferrules that are a fairly tight fit. The glass strands can pierce the skin so gloves should be worn. The dust can be hazardous so a mask should be worn. The original kite was black and was reasonably visible against various skies except dark grey cloud.įibreglass can split or the strands fragment if not cut with some care. We chose white with a black centre cell so the kite would be visible against a blue sky and against cloud as well. Light blue would be hopeless against a blue sky. It is simple and I can experiment with different colour combinations to see which may give the highest visibility against a variety of skies. Rip stop Nylon cloth.įirst a scale drawing is either manually done or composed on the computer.
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