Barn Door Kite Plans

For The MBK Skewer Barn Door Kites

The 1-Skewer Barn Door Kite

The 2-Skewer Barn Door Kite

Tips And Hints

These barn door kite plans are aimed at the more experienced kite maker. They summarize the far more in-depth instructions to be found under the How To Make A Kite section of this website. It assumes you have the knowledge to do a neat job, use the right knots and keep the weight down!

Could you do me a small favor at this point? Just take a few seconds to complete a very short survey. Thanks!

1. 2-skewer kite only: reinforce the join in the middle of each diagonal spar with a length of skewer, 0.3SL long, glued to one side of the join as in the plan
2. 2-skewer kite only: reinforce the join in the middle of the horizontal spar with 2 lengths of skewer, 0.2SL long, glued to each side of the join as in the plan - they stay flat on the table
3. reinforce the sail edges by adding clear sticking tape over the outlines, then trimming back to the outlines
4. secure the sail to the spar ends using short lengths of tape - clear sticking tape for the 1-skewer kite, electrical tape for the 2-skewer version
5. 1-skewer kite only: bend about 20 to 30 degrees of dihedral into the horizontal spar, that's 10 to 15 on each side - hearing cracking noises from the bamboo is normal!
6. try a length of bridle line about twice as long as the kite is high, to tie between the 2 upper attachment points - in each case use a single-wrap slip knot, secured with a spot of glue
7. try a length of bridle line about 3 times as long as the kite is high, to tie between the upper bridle loop and the lower attachment point
8. for a start, try making a single tail about 6 times as long as the kite is high, with each end tied to the bottom end of a diagonal spar, forming a loop

Hope you've had fun using these barn door kite drawings!

Last updated: 28 Jun 2008