Making 3 ColorWing Morphos

This is a time-lapse that shows the incredibly lengthy process of painting and building these kites. Included is the complete paint and sewing job of one of the three. There is a total of 13 hours per kite of painting, and roughly that of cutting and building as well. The paint when dry adds about 14 grams to the total weight of the kite. The actual process of painting takes many days however, because there are 4 layers per panel and each layer has to dry completely before the next is added. There are a few things this does not show like the initial cutting of the panels and the complete framing processes. The kites are Morpho Gliders designed by Tim Elverston. Graphics and related technologies are by Ruth Whiting. The wing span is 14 feet each, or 4.25 meters. Weight of each finished kite is around 285 grams, or around 10 ounces. Thanks and enjoy!



If you are enjoying the video, it is VERY worth setting playback to 720p HD and clicking full screen.

Music is by Floex and is used with permission from the artist.

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Also, some backstory:

Pictured briefly at the end of this video are deltas made at Jordan Air kites. I designed these deltas at jordan air after being exposed to George Peters kites via Kitelines Magazine back in 1993 and also a small 2 foot plastic delta [giant by Charlie's standards] made by Charlie Sotich in 1995 which kind of started my entire obsession with glider-deltas. I never made any more like them. But after finding an old one in a friend's garage, dean recently revisited the design and has made a few - check out his site for the story. Kinda cool to have it all come full circle.

Leather case for iPhone 4

So this is an iphone 4. Since I can't bring myself to buy a case for my phones, I have figured out a few ways to make them. This one is from leather. I got this phone because of the materials really -- they had me at glass and stainless. That and the camera. The images it takes are really amazing actually. Apparently there is supposed to be a signal attenuation problem with the new iphone when it's touched in a certain place. I can't seem to really make mine do it, but with this case it becomes a non issue anyway.

This is a detail of the well-protected corner.


Here you can clearly see the way each stitch hangs off the edge. There is a tension line that is trapped there and used as a draw string.

There are actually two tension lines. One for the front, and one for the back. As I was working with the leather, it was clear that it was going to need some kind of non-stretch solution for the main dimensional elements of the case. I used two super-thin dyneema lines.


Here you can see the 3 dashes along the side where the two lines get woven into the leather. This is so they can be losened when the case needs to come off which is not very often.



The scrap shows the corners that had to be cut. 8 tiny pieces of leather each had to have a bevel to sit flat against the face of the phone.



As far as the sewing went, it was pretty fiddly. I used a darning foot which is a tiny round foot for the machine. It's normally used with those clampy wooden rings that we used to see in people's houses back when they made stuff -- sniff. Anyway, this foot works well for the leather because it's tiny, and doesn't actually make contact with the base plate of the machine. There is a gap that it leaves that is just about the right height for the thickness of the leather, so you don't have it pressing down super hard. I have an industrial machine, but i didn't even have a chance to use the motor. I just turned the hand wheel with my hand. Each stitch is hand-placed.

an artificial ecosystem in the air

Five kites from our new series. Painted by Ruth Whiting, designed and built by Tim Elverston. This shot was taken in Cervia Italy at Artevento 2010. The three kites in the background each have 14 foot wingspans. The two in the foreground each have 8 foot wingspans.

New Morpho Grandes

First I cut them, and then Ruth paints these for about 13 hours or more. Then I meticulously build them, and then they fly. They're 4.2 meters wide and weigh 284 grams. This is the first of three.

Bone Kite - Stainless wire, carbon fiber, cuben cloth

These images show one of the first flights of my new kite. I call it the bone kite because of the way the fittings work. I didn't realize it at first, but as I started assembling these fittings I saw that they work a lot like our joints. It's actually technology that I first developed for the articulated lamps that I've been making. This kite flies really nicely right now, but I'm more excited about the wide range of adjustment built into the design. Also the sail unclips while leaving the frame self-supported. This means that I can easily clip in different sail profiles and materials for varied conditions. My next designs will be a new quadline, and also another single line that does away with the spine.

Double hinges

A spine and two articulated arms that will be leading edges for two wings.

Articulated carbon

These are fittings that I developed as hinges for my counterweighted lamps. Here I have miniaturized them for use in a kite I'm working on. Images of that to follow.

Sassy and the Flame

The fruit of the fire sticks

I've been making juggling sticks for a long time, but never made a set for fire until now. Here are the first shots from them. Taken by Paul Forrestel with my nikon at 2 and 3 second exposures.

Physics Sticks

I just worked out a path that I'm happy with for the design of one of my long-time favorite toys, juggling sticks. These are FAST, and feel almost mathematical when you use them. If you catch them just right, they will be found to be singing on the control stick. They would suck for a beginner perhaps, but wow! Earlier this month I ordered some materials for them and I've been playing with different ways of putting them together. This is carbon, silicone, webbing, and merino. I'm keen! And these are by way far, the absolute fastest sticks I have ever used. Previous designs of mine were fiberglass, latex, and tennis balls. The webbing is hot because the weight is totally adjustable.

And then there were two

I've been developing these counterweighted lamps for about 2 months now. It started when our couch became an epicenter for handwork. I have always worked on various things there, but the fact that our friends started knitting and drawing there meant that we needed more specific lighting to accommodate the detailed work. I made the first one and started on the second one right after it was done. The second time around, it went a lot faster to do the arm. My sitting and staring time was far reduced because I'd already designed the fittings for the arm. The base was a different story. I wanted to move away from the wood base in the first lamp and make one using a consistent set of materials - carbon tubes and stainless wire. I figured this would unify the design, and I think it has. The next one will have a more shapely base, although I do enjoy this one.

I use the beautifully precise bearing in dead hard drives for the main counterweight - I strip parts out until I have the right weight, then I drill a hole in the top and feed the spectra around the center drum. This handles movement for two points in the articulated structure - the top point and the mid point. The lamps can be adjusted with very minimal force - two fingers to any position within their range.

In developing these stainless wire fittings for carbon tubes on both kites and lamps, I have really felt tested by the material. It is a real study in minimalism. These lamps have the smallest amount of wire that I could possibly use. What look like flourishes on the fittings are just clean ways to deal with the ends of wire that don't involve stabbing the user. The wire is both very forgiving, and totally relentless in the demand for precision. The annealing is absolute and wonderfully consistent when the wire first comes out of the can, but as soon as you commit to a bend that is beyond that limit, the wire hardens, never to return to the soft state that it started in. You have to work in one direction. There is no going back and adjusting certain aspects of the form.

The Flame at the Drop Zone

I love these shapes.

Hold a Sky Photon by the tail

I made this Sky Photon a long time ago as a wedding gift for some friends. I finally got to spend some time with it over this long weekend. In spite of very poor quality wind, it was tied off to my back pack all day long. I had some fun with one of the only relaunches.

First work off the new pliers

Got my german surgical pliers today. Fantastic tools, and basically jewelry in and of themselves. This is a necklace I'm working on as another present.

Finished Necklace

This is a gift. For whom? I cannot mention here. Stainless wire, onyx and jasper.

New Necklaces

Here is the start of a new design. This is about 25% of it. Higher quality shots to follow.

Scan vs Photo

Recently Ruth and I have been in image capture hell. Or, to put it more mildly, we have learned a lot about what makes a good image capture. Here are two examples showing side by side crops at 100%. These are Ruth's original oil paintings on paper. They are about 25" x 15" overall. We need to capture for Ruth's upcoming book Lonely Bird's Friend. Of course it's obvious that a scanner is going to have higher quality than a camera if it is possible to use a scanner in a given situation. This experience really drives it home though.

Prior to seeing the scans, we were blown away by the image quality from our recent shoot on the Nikon. The right hand frame on each image here is from my Nikon D90 with a 50mm prime at f5.6 on a tripod and using diffused halogen lights. The left side is from a sheetfed scanner at 600 dpi, the right side is from the nikon at 300 dpi and 12 megapixels. To compare, the nikon's raw images are about 12-15 megabytes. The scans are 376 megabytes. So what's the catch? The scanner at our print shop is perfect in every way except it leaves banding and lines in the images making them unprintable–we think the scanner is out of adjustment. We go for an appointment next week to another print shop to try another scanner. High hopes for it.

Good advice, for some.

Don't fly kites near power lines. It is pretty good advice. Like many rules however, some can be bent, others can be broken. We often fly in our front yard. It has some really beautiful lines right above it. Getting close to them can be really photogenic.

Ruth in the studio - nearing completion of the book

These are among the final images which have to be done to complete Ruth's book - Lonely Bird's Friend

Finished lamp - carbon, stainless, spectra, cuben fiber

The makings of a counterweighted lamp

Two weeks ago I made this lamp. I'm working on the second. This one has a wooden base, the next one will be all carbon. This is a wall-mounted lamp that is counterweighted so it can be adjusted with two fingers to go anywhere within the 5 foot radius. It started with an idea for a bent wire junction.