General Kiting

I recently blew a cell on my closed cell kite, right from the trailing edge to the leading edge. Happend during a full speed impact on the water. So I thought I would share with you the method I used to repair the kite (Peter Lynn 8m^2 Synergy). It's a bit scary the first time you do a repair, but take your time and with practice you will have your repairs done over night and you will be ready for kiting next day. No waiting for the repair man, no hassles with your finance minister.

1: The lower skin rip, from the trailing edge right through to the leading edge, stopping at the black LE nose.

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2:Rip stop/start at the internal strap reinforcement.

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3: Clean up the wound, remove sand from the repair zone.

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4: Repair the rib, some local tearing along the seam line. Applied 50mm wide Vibac Stylus patch (sticky one one side) to both sides of the rib.

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5: Apply a permanent single stitch.

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6: Unpick the trailing edge on the side where the rib folds over.

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7: The trailing edge unpicked. Remove gum from the seam, makes sewing later on that much easier. Open enough for sewing arm to get in.

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8: Temporarily sticky tape the skins together on the inside (a flat board underneath helps), then apply the repair tape (sticky on one side) to the outside.

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9: Repair tape applied. Smooth it out nicely. If you make a mistake it can easily be peeled off and try again.

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10: Feed in the sewing arm into the trailing edge opening and start sewing on the repair strip.

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11: Skin repair strip sewn on. Single pass stitch on the outside, tripple stitch on the inside (normal sewing thread used). Single stitch would suffice if a stronger thread was used.

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12: Complete lower skin repaired.

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13: Turn kite inside out through the trailing edge opening. Apply double sided tape to hold rib to skin. Spot Light has this tape. Also called basting tape.

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14: Bring the skin and rib together using the double side tape. This temporarily holds them together while you scrunch up the kite under the sewing arm.

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15: Start to feed in the kite under the sewing foot through the trailing edge opening.

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16: After some more scrunching ...

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17: ... pushing it all the way up to the leading edge.

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18: Scrunch up the kite enough to give a free flat patch around the sewing foot and poke your finger inside through the trailing edge opening (shown below on the right) to make sure no extra bits are sewn together that you don't want to be sewn together.

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19: Clear the foot every once in while to keep this area nice and flat. Make sure you only sew the skin to the rib --- nothing else.

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20: Plenty of scrunching ....

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21: Do the difficult stitch runs at the end by hand. This adjustable thimble does the trick and has a steel reinforcement.

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22: Make one up your self or get one at Spot Light.

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23: The rib now sewn onto the skin. Note the tight pitch zig zag stitch as a reinforcement where there is a stop/start in the seam line for the internal strap.

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24: Turn kite right way around again (from inside out). Then all done ....

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25: ... well almost ... sew up the trailing edge. Kite ready for action.

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This is one of the more challenging repairs, hopefully you will not need to do this one too often.

First edition written by Norman Freund, 13 October 2009.

Well done Norm, Nice level of detail, very well written!

JOLLI

Norm .... you are a gifted man


That was spotty dog mate




Marty

Nice repair job Norm!
It certainly is nice to be able to fix your own kites. I tend to prefer doing the little patch jobs myself and leave the big stuff to the sailmakers with the giant table arm sewing machines. That said, they certainly charge for their time. My last repairs were the replacement of a couple of scuff pads and reinforcing on a leading edge and it ended up setting me back $150. Ah well, at least the kite is alive and well.

Moved your write up on the repair to the General Kiting Forum and made it a Sticky Norman so it will always be on the bottom of the front page of general kiting so others can easily find it in the future.

Nice neat job on the repair, thanks for taking the time to document it all and share.

Spot any similarities here?

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How much do you think a repair like this would cost?

I don't have one of those fancy sewing-majiga's...

Oh dear. Yes looks very familiary. So what did you do, full speed crash of the leading edge into the ground or water?

Actually when you have a close look at where the damage was done and where I suspected it started, it appears this starts from the wee pocket where the strap goes through --- there is a weak point in the seams as they made it in the factory. I fixed this when I did my repair.

How much to fix? Well, actually if you don't mind spending a little extra time, you can do it by hand, but it would take a good day to do it. My first repair was done by Bob Dawson, it was around $130 to $150 including freight, not a bad price, but when you can do it your self and have a day turn around, you can't beat that.

If you can get your self a second hand sewing machine, for 100$ or so, you are already ahead. I paid about 350$ for mine, new, but with around 4 to 5 repairs done and building other kites, it has well and truely paid for itself (not to mention all the curtains for our house we have sewn ).

To repair yours, it would take me about half a day to fix it, maybe shorter.

Regards,
Norman

Yeah, it was leading edge into the water (just learning). It does look like it may have started from around the pocket reinforcement.

If I can get it repaired for around that price, I think I'd be better leaving it in the hands of professionals. If I keep doing it, I may have a crack at it though.

I was talking to a guy who had been kitesurfing with Arcs for around 8 years, he said in that time, he'd probably water relaunched about 10 times. I'm hoping that once I work out what's going on with the board, I'll be a bit more gentle. I almost never drop the synergy when I'm in the buggy, bit sad to see my baby kite out of action .

Hi Jabroni,

Get in contact with Jason @ BrisKites or Lach at Kiteworks. I know Jason does his own repairs, Lach may still do his own as well because most of the guys here on the older V1's all sent them to Lach.

Regards,

.Joel

Yes Lachlan still does repairs as well, I only spoke to him a while ago.

I ended up getting it fixed through KitePower - about 4 working days to get it done.

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A local sailmaker did the repairs - all overlaps are stuck together, and the outer skin has been trimmed on the tear, replaced with rip-stop and zig-zag stitched down it's length.

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It came in a bit under $140 - It looks like a really good repair to me - I'll have to see how she flys!

Hi Jabroni,

Get in contact with Jason @ BrisKites or Lach at Kiteworks. I know Jason does his own repairs, Lach may still do his own as well because most of the guys here on the older V1's all sent them to Lach.

Regards,

.Joel

NQR Joel, they sent them to Bob Dawson, he was the most experienced repairer of Peter Lynn arc style kites, even Lach and Jason will tell you that.
Also Kitepower can do fast economical repairs to any foil kite and any type of kite actually, as Jabroni has clearly demonstrated.

Nice work too Norman!!

Thanks Steve,

I must have done the repair right as the kite is still holding up well and it's been up to 35 knots or so.

Norman.

NQR Joel, they sent them to Bob Dawson, he was the most experienced repairer of Peter Lynn arc style kites, even Lach and Jason will tell you that.
Also Kitepower can do fast economical repairs to any foil kite and any type of kite actually, as Jabroni has clearly demonstrated.

Nice work too Norman!!

Im a bit lost here? Didn't you just have a holiday Steve? I think you need another.
Yes Bob was a good repairer but I hadn't sent him anything in 9 years.

Last time I looked Briskites still do repairs in house and KP outsource theirs?
Not trying to argue, just thinking you have had a few too many today

Fair enough Jason.
Kitepower outsource repairs to people that are experts at doing just that - kite repairs.
We'll continue to stick with what we are good at - retailing and servicing the needs of kiters.

Thanks for posting your repair method. My Peter Lynn 16m Venom II got torn up by some nasty waves at the end of last leason out here on the Southern California coast. I tore 7 ribs from the lower skin, several rips in the lower skin along the rib attachment seams and a huge tear in the top skin:

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I followed your method, and after many hours of work, I completed the repairs. The results are great. The kite flies just as good as when I bought it and stiches are holding up fine. The info on this forum is very useful and much appreciated.
The only major difference in my repairs is that I used a zig-zag sticth on everything except the rib-to-skin attachment:

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Thanks acosbie, glad you found the info useful. Must have saved you a lot of dollars especially when compared to a new kite. That must have been the biggest buster I've seen in while. And welcome to the EK.

Regards,
Norman.

HI everyone.
im glynnes from philippines. i usually do kite buggy. i also have the same problem. i blown up 5 cells of my pansh ace 5m. can i replace the cells?? i am really looking for a kite repair shop here in the phil. but its not available.

what should i do ??

HI everyone.
im glynnes from philippines. i usually do kite buggy. i also have the same problem. i blown up 5 cells of my pansh ace 5m. can i replace the cells?? i am really looking for a kite repair shop here in the phil. but its not available.

what should i do ??

Hi Pinoy11 .... welcome to the forum

You could either follow the steps Southerlybuster has so painstakingly detailed out at the start of this thread and do it yourself .... or get if sent to a kite repair shop. Seeing it seems you don't have one nearby I reckon your stuck with DIY mate

Maybe you could hunt down if any local chandlerys do sail repairs .... you could then print off the sequence of photos to see if they can help you.

Or save up and get another kite


Good luck

HI everyone.
im glynnes from philippines. i usually do kite buggy. i also have the same problem. i blown up 5 cells of my pansh ace 5m. can i replace the cells?? i am really looking for a kite repair shop here in the phil. but its not available.

what should i do ??

Wow blowing out 5 cells, that's one hell of a ripper, pardon the pun. Ok jokes aside, I am assuming that you simply tore open the seams and they need to be sewn up again, so the instructions I gave will get you there. If the cloth has been ripped, no worries, just sew on a repair strip. You do of course need a sewing machine, but if you have plenty of time it can be done by hand as well. You do not need a fancy sewing machine, just a plain mechanical one, odds are your grandmother has one lurking around some where gathering dust.

Don't panic, just follow my steps carefully, take it slow first. Once you have done the first cell, the rest will be a lot easier. If you get stuck, well just post up a message and some pics and I will see if I or others can help.

If all of the above is too difficult, maybe see what it would cost to send your kite to say Briskites here in Australia and get Jason to fix it for you. Naturally you have to weight this up with how much you paid for the kite in the first place.

Good luck,
Norman.