Building Box KitesSome General Pointers
Building box kites is a fairly simple exercise in construction, if you restrict yourself to the traditional type of design. Just by looking at the picture up there, you can see all the components. In particular, notice the crossed sticks near the top of the picture. Look closely, and you can see that they are attached inside the kite where the orange part of the sail material wraps around the long rods. There's a blown-up picture of that detail a bit further down this page. Let's call the 4 long rods to which the sails are attached the main spars. The stiffer and lighter the main spars are, the better. Same for the cross sticks or cross-pieces. Some materials used in building box kites include...
Besides the cross sticks already mentioned, there's another pair of them hiding inside the blue band at the other end of the kite. So that's one pair near each end, a tight fit which stretches everything taut and makes the whole box kite rigid. That's important. 
Over on the right there is a blow-up of the relevant part of the picture. You can easily see where the cross sticks attach to the main spars. That cross stick is perfectly straight by the way! It looks crooked, but that's just the colored background doing that. An optical illusion. When building box kites, there are a number of ways to connect the ends of the cross sticks with the main spars. Here's 3...
The sail material needs to be attached to the main spars somehow. Some instructions for making box kites specify gluing the spars directly to the sail material. Otherwise, small pockets need to be stitched or taped onto the material. The spars then slide through these, before the cross sticks are inserted to tension up the whole kite. Of course, sail material for any kite needs to be reasonably light, strong and airtight. Some examples of sail materials that have been used for building box kites include...
Finally, the simplest way to attach a flying line is to secure it onto one of the main spars. Right next to the yellow part of the sail, see the blown-up picture to the left there. I've added a black line to represent the flying line. In the strongest winds it might need to be shifted towards the nose of the kite a little.Box kite instructions often specify a 'bridle' as another way to attach the flying line. This can be a length of flying line attached at both ends of one main spar, with a loop tied into it to attach the flying line. The correct point to locate the loop will be somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the length of the bridle, in from one end. The nice thing about this basic design is that you can remove the cross sticks and the whole kite is easily transported. It becomes just a long thin bundle of sticks and cloth. Can you imagine anything more cumbersome and fragile than a large glued-together box kite? However, if the kite is small enough you might consider leaving it rigged, for zero set-up time at the field. Making Box Kites Without Cross-SticksHere's an interesting idea, which I have actually explored a little, using bamboo skewers for spars. Small slabs of styrofoam can be glued together to form the sails, before gluing light weight rods to the inside corners of the styrofoam. This idea has worked for other people too. After it's all glued together, you can try rounding off the edges of the styrofoam using some sandpaper. This reduces drag forces a little and helps the kite to fly better. Even so, these kites tend to prefer gale-force winds! Also, if construction is not accurate enough, the smaller ones will need a tail to prevent them looping around.In theory, balsa wood could be used in a similar way. Do you have any aeromodelling skills? Have a go at making a little balsa box kite, it should work fine. Particularly if you carve a bit of an aerofoil section into the sails! More than just decreasing drag, this would also increase the lifting force of the sails. Try it using using thick slabs of the lightest balsa, to get some rigidity. Some people are into very tiny kites. In fact, there is at least one competition that I'm aware of that let's people compete for making the smallest flyable kite! Balsa wood would be ideal for building box kites in tiny sizes. Ones that would use ordinary sewing thread for flying line, perhaps! More Complex Box KitesA quick browse around the web will show you that the name 'box kites' these days can be applied to an enormous range of multi-celled kites. Some of the individual cells might look something like a simple box kite. You'd have to be pretty keen on building box kites to tackle one of these, working from plans!Most of these 'cellular' kites are bought almost-ready-to-fly from kite shops or other outlets... MBK Flying Skewers And Plastic is a fun publication for kite lovers. Particularly single-line fliers! This FREE monthly newsletter will help keep you in touch... There's always something new being built or flown at MBK! Your FREE COPY of a great 87-page eBook on popular kites is waiting to be downloaded. It's my way of saying 'Thank You' for subscribing. Last updated: 11 Sep 2009 Return to Box Kites from Building Box Kites All the way back to Home Page
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