Kite Strut Repair
Inflatable struts are building the structural frame of your kite. They are usually constructed out of Dacron with internal PU bladders that are pumped up at a high pressures, exceeding 8psi . Most modern struts are nearly indestructible as long as the integrity of the fabric is not damaged by any sharp object such as shells, your board’s foil or any other sharp objects on the beach. Unfortunately, the damages are usually small and unnoticed and when not repaired all of a sudden the strut fails with a loud bang and you end up with large rips and tears in the Dacron and bladder.
We are able to repair any damages including large blowouts. This does including your bladder. For any strut repair, we first open the closing seam and with the help of our backlit table and a special ripstop tape we line up the fibers and glue the ripped material back together. Once taped, we apply Insigna cloth fabric to the outside covering the damaged area generously. The inside is being reinforced with 175 Dacron, applied with high quality transfer tape. Depending on the location we secure the patches with either our 3 step zigzag or straight stitch sewing machine. The repair is a strong as the original material and is very unlikely to fail. Depending on the condition of the material in the closing seam area, we apply reinforcement before gluing and sewing the seam back up with our walking foot machine.
Usually our biggest challenge with kite strut repairs is colour matching. Each brand comes out with new colors all the time and we have only limited access to the material. we will try our best and contact you before the repair should we really struggle to find an acceptable match.
As a rule of thumb, all damages even if they look tremendous bad can be repaired. Should your wing or kite suffered a major blowout and you are unsure if we can work our magic, please feel free to send us some pics and we are more than happy to give you a quotation based on the pictures.