Kite Making Tools

To start kite making you obviously need some tools as well as the actual raw materials (sail, spar, fittings, bridle line, etc.). These are the tools I have used to build all my kites (currently - as of May 2004 - eight kites, with the ninth in progress).

Work Surface

Obviously you need a space to work - I did all the sewing on our dining room table and all the messing around with the soldering iron in the kitchen. For all the cutting I used either a off-cut piece of melamine coated chip board or an old mirror I had lying around. These did the job but I guess did end up blunting the craft knife more quickly than it would normally have done.

I found you do need quite a large space to work in - a Revolution kite is over 230cm in length - I found my dining room was just about the right size - anything larger would become very hard to work with (oh well - no making that 6m C-Quad then).

Electric Sewing Machine

Essential to sew the different parts and panels together. For kite making you only need a simple machine - one that does different lengths of straight stitch is the minimum (like mine), but one that also does ZigZag stitches is more useful.

As I didn't have a machine I had to buy one - which cost me £35 second hand from a local sewing machine shop.

Soldering Iron

You use a soldering iron to hot cut (i.e. a hot knife that melts the cut edge) bits of Dacron - if you don't (i.e. just use a knife) the ends can fray. You could of course buy some gadget to do this, or (like me) you could find that old soldering iron you have & never use, and file down the soldering bit so it's flat and sharp to use it for cutting.

Also you need one to melt neat holes in the sail/leading edge to take fittings (like the bungee cords on the Revolution). The bit in my soldering iron is double ended so I filed on end to be the cutter and the other I filed smaller to make neat round holes.

Thread

I was recommended this Gutterman thread by my sewing machine shop - and it seems to have done the job fine. I think so long as it's 100% polyester and isn't too thin everything is going to be fine. Don't use plain cotton - it's not very strong and is very thin - not the sort of thing to use in kites.

I wondered about the colours - should I match the thread colour with the sail fabric, but in the end I decided this was way too difficult, so I simply went for white and black thread.

Craft Knife

A sharp knife is essential to cut the ripstop panels to size. Some people recommend hot cutting everything to stop frayed edges - I decided against this as I didn't have the space to hot cut large panels. Also I had read that if you glue the panels first, then sew (even with simple seams) the fraying effect is less. Obviously time will tell on the kites I have made on this one.

I bought this knife especially for making kites, but I have to say a normal Stanley knife should do the trick just as well. So long as it's sharp....

Glue

A lot of kite makers don't use glue as it can gunge up the sewing machine. However as I have found out it is so much easier to glue the panel seams before sewing. The problem I found was that the 2 pieces of fabric would move whilst sewing, whereas when they are glued they, er, don't move.

I have experimented with which glue is best - I found the All Purpose solvent type worked best. The stick glue was useless, as was the wood type glue (I used both of these when I had run out the All Purpose stuff - with poor results!) and there is no way I'm going to try superglue.......

Ruler

I was cheap when I bought this and only got the 60cm one - a 1m ruler is much, much better! So long as it's metal, straight and has dimensions marked on it's going to be good. Having said that I did end up using a clear plastic 12cm ruler as well in order to measure some of the seam allowances.

One thing to watch is not to drop the sharp pointy end onto the fabric - surprisingly it makes a hole.....

Pencil & Rubber

A soft (& sharp!) pencil is needed to mark out the panel patterns (and to label which bit is which). With the Papillon I tried the dress making chalk to do the marking, but found that it rubbed off too easily when stitching.

The only problems I have found is that the pencil marks of the seams can sometimes still be seen (I forgot to erase them), and on dark fabrics (like the purple I used on the Papillon) the grey of a pencil doesn't show up.

Protractor

Useful when making the card templates and checking the kite to ensure that you have got all the measurements correct.

I have decided that a set square (in order to get perfect right angles) would also be useful - something I will get for the next kite project.

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