home • who and what • kite repair • contact • buy WindFire Designs
• WindFire Designs Repair Ticket • the checklist • about performance and repairs •
-
Notes on looks and performance in regard to our kite repair:

When you choose WindFire Designs to do repair work on your kite, we put your kite back together to achieve the best possible wing shape and strength - it's our attention to details and our methods that make our repairs look amazing:

  • We use the natural grid pattern (rip-stop) in the fabric to line up the ripped edges. And we make absolutely sure that this does not creep or gather.
  • Often we must remove existing stitching in order to repair your kite properly.  When this happens, the area that we deconstruct must be re-sewn.  We use the same thread and needle size so your fabric is not over-perforated.  In doing so we maximize the strength of the material.
  • The cloth we use to repair your kite is self-adhesive dacron.  You will find it all over your kite already. It is in almost any place it's reinforced. We feel that it is far better than most commonly sold rip-stop repair tape for many reasons.  However, because kites come in so many colors and have silk-screened graphics, it is not always best to use the same color. Often white or black looks best (just like the manufacturer uses). When it makes good sense, we will use the same color. Also, when a white patch is lit from behind, it turns the color of your kite and its graphics.
With us, performance restoration also happens to be graphics restoration.
As you can see from this repaired Cabrinha Omega, our process simply restores the kite's own graphics. This patch is hot yellow just like the kite. However, it's applied to the other side of the fabric. The stitching above our patch is of course a factory seam.

You won't catch us using magic markers or any such silliness like that. We don't need to.
Can you find the repair in this shot? We hide them really well.

Our repairs never gather sand at the margins like so many others we see. That doesn't just avoid an annoyance, sand also short-lifes the cloth.

The strut was really damaged and is now completely repaired. Shown here during a final test for shape and quality. We put fabric on the inside surface also for complete strength restoration.

 

Strut separation along with complete main-sail blow out. No problem, just keep sewing.

We get the fibers to line up exactly with their previous fiber buddies so they can compare notes on the accident.

That and it makes the sail perfectly smooth again. Near zero performance loss.