We asked the professor about it, and were informed that this
kite was of the Malay type, which is so designed that the cloth bellies
out into pockets on each side of the central stick or backbone, and these
pockets balance the kite while the backbone acts as a rudder.
Finding that we were interested in the subject he gave us full
instructions for making kites from 5 to 8 feet long, and these I jotted
down for future use. In a 5-foot kite he said the stick should be 3/8 inch
thick and 1/2 inch wide, in a 6-foot kite 7/16 inch thick and 9/16 inch
wide, in a 7-foot kite 5/8 inch thick and 3/4 inch wide, and in an 8-foot
kite 3/4 inch thick and 1 inch wide. On the following summer we built a
5-footer and also an 8-footer.
A Five-foot Malay Kite.
For the 5-foot kite we used two sticks of hickory 3/8 of an inch wide, 1/2
an inch thick, and each 5 feet long. According to directions, one stick
was laid across the other at a point two-elevenths of its length from the
top. Two-elevenths of 5 feet is a little less than 11 inches, and so we
fastened on the cross stick 11 inches from the upper end of the backbone.
The sticks were not nailed together, because this would have weakened the
frame just at the point where it was under the greatest strain.
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