A Garbage Bag Kite

This is a simple project to do with kids. All you need are two sticks, a bag, string and scissors and you have a kite!

Step 1 The Materials

You will need: a plastic bag, string, two sticks, scissors and ribbon.

Comments

[stitches256]

I used to make these with my grandfather as a child. Thanks for the post! I'm going to be doing this with my kids this weekend. :-)

[borge_009]

i have tried this deisgn when i was a kid. but i bend the stick the horizontal one to form half a circle. in that way i can easily steer and control the kite....

[colorex]

Sorry, but in Ecuador people (kids) have been using plastic bags for ages. They also use split bamboo sticks. and they use rag strips for the tail. HOWEVER they almost never use th + shape. they make an "H" instead see picture

[daftcloud]

or you could just put a transom knot on there

[A good name]

Haha... my grandpa's house gets a lot of wind, and me and my cousin were seriously bored, so we took a big green garbage bag with the handles, tied some string to the handles, then went on his deck and flew it around... it was so windy that it actually dragged me (I was a good 135 pounds about then) and he had to grab on too... It was sweet.

[dchall8]

I like the idea of tying the plastic to the stick, too. You might use a constrictor knot to make that connection. Once pulled tight, a constrictor knot cannot be loosened - only tightened. The only way to release it is with scissors or a knife.

If you want a more sturdy kite, look for house under construction and see if you can get scraps of Tyvek. Or you if you get any mail in Tyvek envelopes, those work.

If you want a cleaner look at the corners, try using a 1/2 to 3/4 inch line of Gorilla Glue on the stick. The disadvantage of the GG is you have to hold the pieces together for 24 hours while the glue dries.

[!werdna!]

I made sometrhing like this back in april and the smaller of the two cross-bars for the frame snapped instantly!

[dchall8]

Unfortunate choice of sticks. A different stick should work better.

[l8ntpianist]

as a child about 7-8 my model airplane class teacher from the local youth center "jeff" mad a kite from like 1x2 and black plastic tarp. it was probably between 6-8' wide and 8-10' tall with "open house" or something on it. geez we made awesome flying models like a 3 inch oval thin piece of balsa with stabilizers on the outers of the narrows of the ovals and a balsa stick lik 3/8x3/16 for a frame with clay to balance em. remember "battle star galactica"? cylon fighters? also made a helicopter. i was 2nd youngest in class and first to finish. i told jeff it doesnt work. he spent roughly 2 hrs trying to make it work. it was wood framed and covered in cellulose and paper. i said hey maybe it doesnt fly because it doesnt have a rotor. anyway a long story short he said"i know how to fix em" and then he threw my chopper on the floor and stomped it, and told the rest of the class dont bother with them. god was he mad! he got the plans from a model book. greatfull to have had the opp.

[bricoleur]

If you use two sticks of the same length, cross them at between 1/7 and 1/10 of the vertical one, and tie a bow into the horzontal one, you will have a much more stable and easy to fly kite. The bridle line should be made to go through the plastic and the bow should bend away from the bridle. The nice innovation here is the simplicity of lashing the plastic to the sticks. Having made lots of these over the years with tape, I really appreciate the idea of being able to manage without tape. As to the spar (cross stick) breaking, the size of the spar and mast needed depends on the size of the kite. As to the "balance" ribbon, stay away from weights, what you want is something to drag behind in the wind, not to pull down toward the ground. Finally, remember that kites that are unstable on a short string near the ground often can be stable on a longer string far from the ground. The easiest way to achieve that is to have one person launch the kite downwind and the other gently pull string in hand over hand until the kite catches the wind above the trees. Then feed the string out again slowly.

[firefly]

I'll be trying this out with my girlfriend tomorrow ;) We'll post pictures so you can laugh at them.

[wdrwilson]

You may get better results if you have the frame at the back of the kite instead of the front. i.e. let the wind push the fabric against the frame instead of having it billow as shown.

[Aleksi]

Yes, you definitely will get better results with the frame behind the sail. Attaching the frame like that is just plain wrong. Ok, kids wil love the kite which ever way but I'm an engineer so I can't keep my mouth shut.

[sleepydog]

If you tie this loop of string to the vertical spar(longer stick), you can control the balance of the kite much better by adjusting where your flying line attaches to thie loop (called the bridle). Here are some nice knot trying pictures for attaching the bridle:
http://www.powerkite.co.uk/knots.html

[catcher28]

simple but effective, smart plan i like it