Hand-tied iPhone Case

After resisting the urge to buy a case from the at&t store - I have a strong dislike of retail these days, I made this iPhone case using some scraps of kitesurfing kite bridle line. I figure it beats buying yet another thing with lots of packaging. Since having knots in this stuff in this context wouldn't work, I pierced through with a bridling tool and used spectra to bind it at the key points. This protects it well from being dropped on the corners, and stays out of the way of the controls and the invisible sensors on the front of the screen that sense brightness and holding it up to your face. Second gen might be sewn at the white points using the machine.




So, I couldn't stand it. I went through and replaced all the spectra with bar-tacks done with the sewing machine. Here is the design all cleaned up and nice looking.

Building a mini photon

Here is a time lapse of the final stage of building one of these little kites. This particular kite is sold to Scott Howlett - thanks Scott! I'm first putting clear reinforcements on the tips, then black fibrous reinforcement which gets hot-tack welded to prevent creep, and black bridle point circles. Then I hand bend the stainless fittings for each tip and fit and adjust those to the carbon frame, assemble the kite, and tie the bridle. This is nearly two hours of actual time with a photo taken every 5 seconds. Kite designed by Tim Elverston and Ruth Whiting of WindFire Designs. Carbon, spectra, cuben fiber, oil paint, stainless steel.

Clicking the HD button once the video is playing will increase the quality dramatically.

Cuben MiniMorpho Glider | Snipits from the build

I built this very small cuben morpho glider last night. I haven't flown it much yet, but it seems like a lot of fun. There is a problem at this scale with the stiffness of the cloth, and I think this might come into play with this kite. We'll see.