Kite Building 

Materials and Tools
for the MBK Simple Series

The following kite building materials are required for any Simple Series kite.

• Flying line. I recommend at least 30-pound nylon or Dacron from a kite shop. Acrylic knitting yarn is another alternative although it's a bit thick and will keep your kite a little lower in the sky.
• Two-ply plastic bags, at least 0.5 meters (2 feet) wide and 1 meter (4 feet) tall. The packaging will usually mention "low stretch," "strong," or something similar if the bags are more than one-ply. Also, they will be at the top end of the price range for the size. But they are only plastic bags so still very cheap compared to other materials! Another clue—the lightest bags are very see-through but the multi-ply ones much less so, with stronger color.
• Electrical insulation tape. Black looks good on orange sails! Alternatively, you can try and match the colors.
• Hardwood dowel, 5 millimeters (3/16 inch) in diameter. The ones available to me happen to be Tasmanian oak. Red or white oak should also be OK. In the USA, apparently, Chinese poplar is commonly available as dowel. This is softer than oak and other hardwoods, so 1/4-inch diameter would be a more appropriate size.
  

Use the following tools for any Simple Series kite:

• A ruler with measurements in centimeters or inches.
• Scissors. Just about any type of ordinary paper-cutting scissors will do.
• A black marking pen. Preferably not too fine.
• A cheap hacksaw or fine-toothed wood saw for the dowels.
  

These are probably the bare minimum "tools," if you can call them that, for learning how to build kites!

As mentioned earlier, there's more kite making on this site than you can poke a stick at. :-)

Want to know the most convenient way of using it all?

The Big MBK E-book Bundle is a collection of downloads—printable PDF files which provide step-by-step instructions for many kites large and small.

That's every kite in every MBK series.