For those not
intimately familiar with kiteboarding I will give a brief explanation.
A kiteboarder, as the name suggests, rides on some time of board (in my
case it will be a board similar to a wakeboard in the ocean), using a
large kite to harness the wind to pull themselves around wherever they
like. The kiteboarder is harnessed to the kite and controls it via a
special control bar. There are a few different types of kites that can
be used, with inflatable kites being the most popular, and the kind
that I show how to build in this article. Kiteboarding isn't limited to
the water (which is why I use the more general term kiteboarding
instead of kitesurfing), there is also kitesnowboarding, rollerblading,
iceskating, kayaking, buggying, mountainboarding etc. This means that
you don't have to live near the ocean to enjoy kiteboarding.
This article
will focus on the construction of the kite itsself. If you would like
to see the construction of the control system, the harness or the
board, I will have links here (and just about everywhere else) as soon
as I have the articles written.
I
didn't design this kite - I wanted to actually have it built before the
end of summer, and to work after I spent so much time on it so that I
wasn't wasting my money on fruitless
designs. Though I am seriously considering designing my own now. I
built a kite called "Ikaros Rev 2" by Stelios Alex, you can download
plans, instructions and see some pictures of it here.
It was a kite he designed that was almost made commercially. It was by
far the best plans that I could find, and the included instructions
helped a lot because I had never sewn anything before, let alone make a
giant kite. The instructions included with the kite may be enough for
some people, but I found myself scratching my head at some points so I
am doing a detailed writeup to help out anyone else who might be
considering making a kite.
Why
make your own kite?
 Kiteboarding
is expensive! Usually if I can build something I will make it instead
of buying it, but I didn't have a choice with this project. Kites can
easily cost more than a thousand dollars which I didn't have lying
around. Besides that there is of course bragging rights and the
satisfaction of a job well done (assuming you do it well, and finish
it).
What
you'll need and what it
will cost.
I
tried to keep this project as cheap as possible, and for the quality of
kite that you will be making, its a steal. I wanted to keep the cost of
the kite under $100, and discounting shipping, I did. Depending on what
you order offline and where you live make sure you have an extra
~$30-40 for shipping. The prices you see below are the absolute
cheapest for everything that I could find. In fact the ripstop nylon
for $2.45 a yard is unbelievable. Most kitemaking sites charge $7 and
up for it. The same goes for the dacron fabric.
260' of 1/8 Polyester Cord -
$18.20 Source
Polyester Outdoor Thread - 2
mini kegs - $9.00 Info (Can be found at any fabric store)
Dacron Fabric- 8 yards - $26.00 Source
Ripstop Nylon- 11 yards, 1.1oz -
$26.95 Source
Nylon Webbing 1" wide, 8 feet
-$0.25/ft - $2.00 Source
PVC shower curtains 3x at
$2.50/ea. $7.50. (I couldn't find them online, but they are sold at
Target)
2 packs of kittie inflatable
armbands $2.00 dollar store. Info
I
assume you have a sewing machine, a clothes iron, scissors, and
optionally a soldering iron/wood burner (makes life/cutting fabric way
easier, can be bought for about $6.00 and well worth it)
A few things I would like to
point out
- Make
sure you use the heaviest ourdoor thread that you can find. The kite is
put under extreme stresses when you are flying it and just regular
coats and clark thread won't cut it.
- If
you use a plastic other than pvc for the inflatable bladders then
the kiddie armband valves will not work (they cannot be welded to other
plastics) for more information read
this
- Most
of these things can be bought locally to save on shipping, the only
things that I had to buy offline we're the fabrics because they we're
still much cheaper even with shipping.
- 11
Yards of ripstop material doesn't seem like enough to build the kite
considering that it is 10.6 sqare meters, but if you look closely the
fabric is 67" wide by 1 yard so the surface area of one yard of fabric
is more like 1.5 square meters. I actually bought abot 1.3x the amount
of material that I would need. This made cutting out the pieces less
stressful because I wasn't too terrified about waste material between
cut pieces making me run out of fabric.
Where
to start.
The
first thing you will need to do is have your plans printed. I think
doing this properly was the trickiest part of making the kite. The .DWG
file has all of the parts printed out seperately, you could print it
this way, but it would take a 42 x 67" plot for each piece (which is
about 20 plots). I took the
plans into a .DWG editor and "layered" the parts onto each other (see
image below) for each section (canopy, battens, wingtip batten) for a
total of three plots. I didn't plot the inflatable battens plans as
they are exactly the same as the fabric plan without the hole for the
valve, zipper, or the semicircle cut out of the tip. I have access to a
plotter so I didn't have to
pay to have them printed, but you can have it printed at most any print
shop I've heard. I'll host the tiled plots as soon as I get back up to
school to get the files off my computer up there, in the image below
you can see how i tiled the plot for the battens and the canopy
drawings.
If you are having someone at a
print shop print these for you, you
problably won't have to worry about what I say next: if you are
printing it yourself, depending on the plotter/.DWG editor you use it
can be very tricky to get the plot to the correct scale (the drawing
was made in millimeters so remember 25.4mm (or units) to an inch in
order to get the correct scale if printing in inches) Just remember
that print preview is your best friend and it is useful to print one of
the 300mm squares in your first plot so you can measure it to make sure
you're getting the correct scale.
 |
|
Assuming
you have all of the materials you will need now is the time to trace
and cut out all of the pieces. From the instructions that come with the
kite you will see that just about every part should be cut twice. I
found that like the instructions said, drawing an arrow pointing toward
the leading edge and toward the center of the kite along with a number
to identify the particular panel to work perfectly, in fact if you
don't you will have a very hard time differentiating between panels and
whether they are right/left side etc. You will also want to mark on the
battens and leading edge tube the arrows that mark the start and stop
location for the joining stitches.
There are a lot of
ways that could be used to get the patterns onto the fabric, I didn't
want to destroy my plans so I chose to put the pattern under the fabric
and trace the lines onto the fabric. I used a crayon to mark the
pattern on the dacron fabric, and a sharpie (comes in very handy later)
for the ripstop nylon. I reccommend using the sharpie for the dacron as
well. The dacron was transparent enough to make
tracing not a problem at all. The ripstop being dark blue was a bit
more problematic. I ended up using flourescent light (any light would
to) to shine through the fabric so that I could see the lines
on
the pattern underneath. (see image below). After tracing the shape onto
the fabric, I traced another line around the pattern 10mm away. This is
the line I would cut, it is called leaving a seam allowance, and is
leaves space to sew the joint while preserving your pattern.
 |
|
I
would usually trace 1-2 pieces then cut them out. The best way to cut
out the panels is with a sharp tipped soldering iron or wood burner.
This makes cutting a breeze, in fact it was far far easier than using
scissors, and it seals the end of the fabric so that the fabric doesn't
fray and eventually pull your seams out.
Before
doing any sewing,
I cut out all of the pieces starting with the dacron. I chose to start
with the dacron because I haden't recieved the ripstop nylon yet,
looking back it was a good thing that I did - not only are the dacron
pieces smaller (therefore easier to trace correctly), the dacron
doesn't slide around as much as the nylon and is more transparent so it
is easier to trace, all of those reasons make it a good "warm
up." If you ordered as much as I did, you will have a decent
amount of
excess to work with, but you should still make
sure you put at least a little bit of thought into cutting the parts so
as to waste as little fabric as possible. Who knows you might have
enough left over to make a small kite.
|
In order to trace the
large panels from the ripstop I had to ensure that the fabric wasn't
shifting around. This is very difficult as the fabric is very slippery
and the panels so large you can't help but lean on the fabric to reach.
I found the best way was to keep the fabric taught with some weights,
then put a board in the center of the panel to sit on and trace the
panel "around me." The board put a nice distributed force on the fabric
keeping it in place, and it gave me a conventient place to sit. After
the panels are traced, cut them out with the soldering iron cutter
making sure to leave a seam allowance.
|
Now that the panels are cut out the next step is to sew everything together. I found this page to be very helpful with explaining the types of stitches used and how to set up the sewing machine properly. In making the kite I used the Plain Seam for joining the canopy panels, and the stitch described in the instructions included with the plans for the leading edge batten. Make sure that you leave enough thread at the beginning and end of your seam so you can tie them off. I tied off every seam then put a tiny drop of superglue on the knot to make sure it never came undone. I didn't follow the order of assembly used in the instructions to make the kite. I began by sewing the leading edge tube, then the battens together to get warmed up before I went on the slightly trickier canopy. I started by sewing in the zippers to the tube and all of the battens in the marked locations. I used a straight stitch to get the zippers in position, then a zigzag for strength. The zippers I used I got at Hobby Lobby and Walmart. They are "sport zippers" and have nylon teeth and a coated zipper which should hold up well to saltwater. The link seems to only have zippers larger than 12 inches, but it should be a good reference for the type of zipper you need. The next thing I did was cut out the holes for the inflatable batten valves. I cut out a 1.25" diameter circle in the marked location on each batten with my cutting tool then cut a matching hole out a small piece of scrap and sewed it over the hole with a zigzag stitch for reinforcement.
 |
 |
Next sew the the leading edge inflatable tube pieces together (though don't sew the tube shut yet! the battens must be attached to it before sewing it shut).It is a good habit to always sew in the same direction for each piece when you have several panels joining together making a large piece. Unless you pin the pieces together there will tend to be extra fabric at the end of your stitch (this is due to the top material being under less tension than the bottom piece in the sewing machine, because of this the bottom piece is ever so slightly "stretched" in relation to the top piece. For a couple stitches it is negligible, but when you have hundreds of stitches on a 5' long seam it adds up to an inch or so mismatch at the end, and it is desirable to have it all on one side so that you can trim it off easily without significantly impacting the gemoetric accuracy of the kite.) This raises the question of why not just pin the seams? The answer is that it really is more trouble than its worth because the seams aren't straight, in fact most of the seams on the kite are the joining of two very different curves so that when it is inflated it assumes a tapered bent tube. This makes it very hard (e.g. time consuming) to pin.
 |
 |
Instead of pinning the seams I came up with a neat little innovation
(I'm certain its been done before but I've never seen it, so I call it
innovation). Since pinning was out, I was sewing the pieces by eye,
having to constantly stop sewing and lift the top piece to check that
it was aligned with the one below. That also was no good. I realized
that if I had a light source underneath the fabric it could shine
through and I could see how well the two lines we're lining up without
having to stop. Any small light source will do - a booklight, small
flashlight, a particularly bright backlight on a phone in a dimly lit
room. I happened to have a small flourescent light that was used with
the gameboy color before they put backlights into them. It provided
nice even illumination and wasn't so bright as to "wash out" the lines
in the fabric. If you use a flashlight or something with an
incandescent bulb that tends to make a bright spot you can diffuse the
light by putting wax paper or even normal copier paper over the bulb.
Once I had the light in place sewing went much, much faster.
 |
 |
After sewing the leading edge tube sew the battens shut with a straight
stitch around the perimeter. The battens need to be sewn to the leading
edge tube. This is simple since there are arrows marking the stitch
location on both the tube and the battens. Use a straight stitch then a
zigzag for strength. These stitches aren't particularly load bearing
but I like to make sure that everything is bulletproof. Make sure that
all of the battens are sewn in the correct locations. It is pretty easy
to fix now if you messed up but once the leading edge tube is sewn shut
it would be royal pain to correct. To sew the tube shut use two
straight stitches both beginning in the center and going out to the
wingtip on either side (to leave excess material on the wingtips).
Sewing the main canopy is very much like sewing the battens and is more
of a trial of patience than skill. The light comes in extremely handy
here, as stoping to check if your lined up every few inches would be
agony for the amount of stitching you will be doing. I joined the
panels by using a plain seam which is explained on this
page, then I ran a zigzag down the middle of the seam for
maximum strength. Once again make sure that you sew from the front to
the back so that extra material collects at the rear of the kite.
The seams on the canopy where battens would be attached I only did the
first straight stitch (not doing the second stitch or reinforcement
zigzag) in order to make attaching the battens easier. Once all of the
main body panels are joined sew the canopy to the leading edge
inflatable tube. Sew it to the fabric sticking out from where you
closed the tube. I used a straight stitch then a zigzag.
Sew the battens to the canopy. Once use the arrows in the plans for
start and stop locations. I sewed the battens to the unfinished plain
seam on the canopy with a straight stitch then ran a zigzag down the
middle for strength.
The final steps to completing the kite is to sew the wingtip batten
pockets on (with a batten inside) and to attach the webbing/strap for
the flying lines to connect. The batten pockets are a breeze after all
the sewing of the kite. Just cut them out of dacron and sew them on.
The batten i used was a 3/8" fiberglass rod I happened to have.
Anything light strong and flexible works - you could use a fishingrod,
or even way overkill a fiberglass golf club shaft. The flying line
attachment points are pretty straightforward. Make the length of each
one about the length of the batten pocket then sew them as per the
instructions to the top of the kite. (this distributes the force
better). Sew them with a straight stitch on either side and a zigzag
down the middle.
The instructions also mention a few other steps such as sewing
reinforcement rhombuses, and a line around the perimeter of the kite. I
didn't have time to put these on before I flew the kite and it has
worked well so far, though I suspect a particularly strong gust of wind
could do some damage to the kite without them so I recommend adding
them - I just don't have any images.
I will have an article for creating the inflatable battens, building
the harness, and rigging and flying the kite soon. Check
back for an in depth rundown of all the above!
*UPDATE* Can you believe I still haven't tested the kite? I will someday I promise!
To get all the latest updates just take a look at my blog.  |
