How to Make an Indoor Rokkaku Kite

On this page are a number of easy steps showing you how to make an indoor rokkaku kite from readily available materials. 

The only materials required for this design are

• One sheet of plain copier paper—A4 or Letter size. Use colored paper if you want to!
• 18 mm (3/4 in.) clear sticky tape, in a dispenser preferably. Narrower tape would be even better, if you have it.
• A light plastic bag, at least 45 cm x 30 cm (18 in. x 12 in.) before being cut open. I used large freezer bags. 
• Any polyester sewing thread, preferably the lightest available.

The tools required, if you can call them that, are

• A pair of scissors.
• A ruler.
• A straight edge longer than 45 cm (18 in.).
• A ballpoint pen.
• Colored permanent markers.

Note: In the photos below, yellow lines have been added to make clear where the edges of sticky tape are.

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Step 1—Make Sail

• Lay down a plastic bag, and smooth it out to remove the most obvious folds and creases.
• Measure and mark dots as indicated in the photo.

• Flip the bag over.
• Mark dots over the two dots showing through the plastic. They are not far from the middle in the photo above.

• Cut the bag along the sealed edge, to open it.
• Cut the bag along the opposite side to the side with four dots.
• Open the bag out into a single flat sheet, with the dots on top. In the photo you can see all eight dots. 
  

• Rule lines between six of the dots as shown, to complete the rokkaku shape.

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Step 2—Decorate Sail

Do you have permanent colored markers? It's time to take them out.

• My approach was to put 1 cm (3/8 in.) wide colored stripes down each side of the centerline, 0.6 cm (1/4 in.) apart. Then a 0.6 cm (1/4 in.) wide border of black went all around on the inside of the rokkaku shape outline. See the photo.
• You do whatever you like! Just try not to add too much weight though. Doing "sparing line art" is how to make an indoor rokkaku kite look good and minimize weight.

• Cut all around the rokkaku shape with scissors. Cutting thin plastic can be tricky so take your time. Sharp scissors help!
• From here on, we will refer to the plastic piece as the sail.

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Step 3—Make Spars

Measure and Draw

• Take your sheet of paper and mark dots as shown.

Note: Some of the dots were too close together to fit a complete arrow between them on the photo. The measurements show how far to go down (or up) in each case. Easy! 

• With ruler and pen, connect the dots as shown. Note that not all dots are connected!

Laminate and Cut Out 

• Lay down sticky tape to fully cover the shapes. A small amount of overlap is OK, if you happen to be using narrower tape.

• Flip the paper over so you can add tape to the reverse side of all the shapes. It might help to place the paper up against a well-lit window, to trace the corner dots. Another way is to poke holes through the paper with a pin, at all the corners. Then you can see where all the shapes are.

• Cut out all the shapes, as shown. Note the centerlines of the vertical spar, at top; don't cut along those ;-)

Join Vertical Spar Pieces

• Lay down the two vertical spar pieces, wide ends together.
• Check the alignment of the centerlines with a straight edge such as a ruler. See the photo.
• Tape the pieces together at the join. Use just enough tape to go once around the entire join.

Fold Lengthwise

• Fold all the shapes in half down their lengths as shown. The top piece is taped together around the middle.
• Crease all the folds sharply. The thin ends are tricky, but it can be done! Just do the best you can, by working along from the thicker ends and it should be OK. Pinching between thumbnail and forefinger works well.
• What you have now is a vertical spar (the longest piece), four horizontal spars (the next longest pieces) and two cross members (the shortest pieces).

At this point, you're about halfway through learning how to make an indoor rokkaku kite! The hardest bits have been done already, I'd say.

Tape Vertical Spar Fold

The purpose of this is to apply tape around the fold, in order to help the spar retain its fold angle. It might be an idea to practice on a few bits of scrap paper first!
   

• In the middle, fold the spar flat.
• Apply a 10 cm (4 in.) length of tape around the fold as shown, keeping the paper folded flat while applying the tape. In the photo, the paper has sprung back a little.

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Step 4—Attach Spars

Tape Vertical Spar

• Flip the sail so the art work is against the table.
• Take the vertical spar and align one end to the top corner of the sail. Ensure the fold angle is 90 degrees or a little less, all the way along.

• At the top corner of the sail, place a short strip of sticky tape across the fold line of the spar.
• Gently press down on both sides, so the tape goes down then across to the left and right.
• With scissors, trim the overhanging tape flush with the sail edges. See the photo.

• At the bottom corner of the sail, lay down a strip of tape in the same way as before.
• This time, with scissors, trim both overhanging tape and the spar itself if necessary so it all looks neat and tidy around the bottom corner. See the photo.

Tape Horizontal Spars

• In a similar way, lay down the upper horizontal spars, ensuring the fold angles are 90 degrees or a little less.
• Adjust where the wide ends touch the vertical spar, so the horizontal spars are at right angles (90 degrees) to the vertical spar. The thin ends should pass over the upper side corners of the sail. See the photo.

• Tape the spars in place. It's OK to let the thin ends go flat against the plastic when taped.
• With scissors, trim the overhanging tape and the spar tips so it all looks neat and tidy around the side corners of the sail. See the photo, which just shows one side of the kite.

• In a similar way, position and tape down the lower horizontal spars. See the photo, where all four horizontal-spar pieces are taped down and trimmed.

• At this point, lay down a short strip of tape across the vertical spar as well. The top edge of the tape should be 5 cm (2 in.)  below the upper horizontal spars, as shown in the photo.

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Step 5—Attach Cross Member

• Using a ruler, make a small mark exactly halfway along the cross-member piece.
• Place the cross member onto the upper horizontal spars as shown, aligning the mark with the fold in the vertical spar.
• Stick one end of the cross member onto a horizontal-spar piece as shown, using a square of sticky tape.

• Now support the horizontal spar with some handy object underneath the sail corner.
• Shift the supporting object until the spar tip is 3 cm (1 1/8 in.) clear of the tabletop.
• Gently place a square of sticky tape over the other end of the cross member, so it too is stuck to the cross spar.
• Make sure the sticky tape is stuck firmly, then remove the supporting object.

• In the same way, attach the remaining cross member over the lower horizontal spars. There's the completed kite in the photo. The cross members sure are hard to see!
• Don't worry if the kite flops a bit flatter with the support(s) removed. It all comes back into shape when the kite flies.

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Step 6—Attach Flying Line

You have pretty much finished learning how to make an indoor rokkaku kite at this point!

• Flip the kite over so the black dots under the vertical spar are visible.
• Mark another black dot, 5.5 cm (2 3/8 in.) below the dot where the spars cross. It's quite important to be accurate here.
• Cut off about 2 meters (6 feet) of polyester sewing thread and lay one end over the dot just marked.
• Stick down at least 3 cm (1 in.) of the thread by lining up a 3 cm (1 in.) strip of sticky tape with the dot, as shown in the photo.

Note: Those horizontal spars should really line up with the upper dot; it's out by a few mm but won't matter :-)

• Add another 3 cm (1 in.) strip of tape crossways, as shown in the closeup photo. The kite is ready to fly.

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Step 7—Flying!

This is a very low-speed kite and it will effortlessly float up at walking pace. Be careful not to jerk the thread or pull too quickly, since this will promptly fold up at least one of the spars!

If a spar does fold up, don't despair. Just carefully pinch the paper where it failed, to get it back into that V-shape section once again. Then try again, going a little slower or smoother this time.

The Launch Technique

This is how I like to launch, on a length of thread equal to your shoulder height:

• Lay the kite flat on the floor, with the thread on top of course and the tail end pointing at your feet.
• Lift gently straight up, while taking a couple of quick steps backward.
• If the kite appears to be rising, turn around and walk forward while looking back over your shoulder.
• Within seconds, you should see the kite floating behind. Walk a little faster to climb the kite, slow down to descend. It's a fine balance!

If you have the space, try letting out more thread and adjusting your speed until the kite cruises along just short of the ceiling. Look out for light fittings and so on. Look where you're going too, from time to time ;-)

If you need even more line length, just tie on more thread and wind it onto a small square of cardboard.

Special Flying Tip

Full size roks rely on a curved vertical spar to achieve maximum stability. If your indoor rok wobbles about a lot while flying at a high angle, try this... Carefully crease the vertical spar as sharp as you can, but only from the nose and tail of the kite, back to the cross member in both cases.

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Ooops, I bent the vertical spar. OK, if this happens due to flight loads, it can seriously weaken the kite—to the point where it's no fun to try and fly any more. But it's easy to reinforce the spar enough to get the kite flying well again.

Just lay a few strips of tape over the fold in the vertical spar, right over the affected area. Then sharpen the crease again with finger and thumbnail. See the photo below.

I hope you have enjoyed learning how to make an indoor rokkaku kite this way.

 

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