Stick to Fabric Fittings & Methods

A. Stick to Fabric, Fittings or Methods:
Custom:

STICK TO FABRIC - STOCK FITTINGS:

1. Pockets - large & small:

It’s more of a method, not a fitting, and it has been around forever. Still works great, and its cheap. I use nylon edge binding mostly or polypropylene webbing for larger sticks, or seat belt webbing for really high stress areas. No not forget to put vinyl end caps on the ends of the sticks, it really increases the life of the pockets, and keeps the stick from poking thru the fabric.

Biggest pain is sewing them on, especially the small ones for micro graphite. My way, fold a 1 1/8” piece of 1/2” edge binding as shown in Detail “B”:

Hold in left hand at pocket spot, lower presser foot centered on top of nylon at right edge, sew straight stitch forward to edge, then backward to top, then forward to bottom, till secure. Now pocket is held in place and its easy to move presser foot over to the left side and repeat the forward, backward sews to finish the pocket. Man, I must have done a thousand of these between Rotators and the Muncie Rush.

PIC: Repeat Rush pocket pics small & large

2. Grosgrain Tie Downs and Sleeves:

The tie down is very simply a piece of polyester 1/4” grosgrain ribbon webbing sewn to the skin in the center and then used to tie the sticks to the skin with a shoelace type knot.

The sleeves are short pieces of webbing usually nylon sewn to the sail so that the stick can slide thru, and thereby be held to the skin at that point, but the stick still can be removed on disassembly.

PIC: Tulsa Points: color sticks and no sticks tie down, color vertical sleeves

3. Bungie or Beads & Nocks:

This system was extensively used before the invention of machined end caps. You glue to the stick various different kinds of nocks and attach the stick to the sail using either bungie or beads. The disadvantage over MNC’s, you break the stick, you also must replace the nock, since its glued on to, the broken stick. The photos of each kind follow, along with a little text:

PIC Nock Inserts are used to re-enforce the end of epoxy tubes with a point, and in addition a bjorn nock is required to complete the assembly.

PIC Nock Adapters accomplish the same thing for linear graphite sticks as inserts do for epoxy tubes. A bjorn nock is also required to complete the assembly.

PIC Flush Inserts or Converta Sleeves have absolutely nothing to do with nocks. The only reason I put them in here is because the name is confusing and they are in the catalog right with the nocks. There use is to re-enforce the end of an epoxy tube. In other words, a flush aluminum insert that gets glued in the end of the stick to make it super strong. Usually used at high stress areas such as the end of the stick inserted in a stunt kite tee bracket as the lower spreader.

PIC One piece Stubby Nock & One piece Pointed Spar Nock. Both do the same thing. They replace the nock adapters with a one piece nock. The nock fits over the linear graphite sticks with no need for an adapter. Of course, its stronger when you use an adapter, but we are talking kites not rockets. Obviously the difference is one is pointed and the other one is stubby. The stubby is probably the safer one, and the pointy one is the one that originally was used for arrows, but works well for kites.

4. Spar Clamp & Rivet as used on sails:

Another Ron Gibian invention, he uses them on his noodle kites to hold the sails taut on the top and bottom tensioning stick. I used them on the Grand-son of Woodstock to keep the outside of the front triangle taut.

The device is a plastic clamp, pick the size closest to the diameter of the stick you are using; it gets held together with a two part rivet, that gets compressed together to tighten the clamp. The cleanest way to compress the rivet is to put the whole thing in a micro vise or a small machinists vise and screw down on the vise screw to squash the rivet to tighten it.

PIC: Clamp and rivet alone, use of the vise to compress rivet

My GS of W for clamp at white end tensioners