New Style of Kite Line Winder
by Albert den Haan
(Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
A photo montage of the KAPstan winder with 2 sizes of reel mounted
I'm working on a new style of kite line winder that I want to share.
It uses a capstan to pull the line, and then winds the line onto a lightweight reel.
The reel can be quickly dismounted and/or replaced to fly the kite directly from the reel or to wind down another kite.
The capstan has two crank handles to handle high and low pull situations, and foam inserts are used to adapt to large and small diameter reels.
Normally excess winding tension is a problem that breaks reels. This thing tends to leave little to no tension on the wound line. Very floppy!
The main disadvantage of this beast is the line threading from the mounted reel to the capstan. It is do-able, but there are just too many places for the line to get caught at the moment.
I'm working on more a detailed article. I just wanted to get this out to where others can take advantage of my summer's development.
Return to YOUR Kite Making Stories!.
As mentioned earlier, there's more kite-making on this site than you can poke a stick at :-)
Want to know the most convenient way of using it all?
The Big MBK E-book Bundle is a collection of downloads—printable PDF files which provide step-by-step instructions for many kites large and small.
Every kite in every MBK series.
