Setting Time

A term you may have never heard of, but for sure, you’ve dealt with it without knowing. In this article, we’ll discuss the setting time of Dyneema and how it will affect your kite and bar.

In the Kitesurf365 Podcast episode with Line Smith and Dave Kay, it’s mentioned that you should check and reset your new lines after 20 hours of flying. Why? Setting time!

To understand setting time, we have to dive deeper into how your kite lines are made. Our kite lines are made with premium yarn-coated SK99+ Dyneema. That’s a mouthful, so let’s make it easier.

When making our kite lines, we take 12 strands and braid them together. A machine with 12 heads rotates around each other, creating a super long kite line up to 100,000 meters! After braiding, we go to prestretching, where two drums rotate in opposite directions, pre-stretching the lines to take out most of the stretch and elasticity of the Dyneema fiber/line. This process also does the first “setting of the fibers.” As the line is braided, some air will remain within the fibers/ braids of the line. A very small amount of air left makes it possible to process the lines into actual ready-to-fly kite lines with a nice loop at the end.

After all braiding and stretching, the lines will be cut into smaller spools, between 1,000-3,000 meters. Those spools are then shipped to us, where we will make your custom kite lines, adding sleeving to protect the line and adding spliced loops. Splicing lines requires some air within the line itself to make it possible to make a splice loop. In this process, we insert some wire into the Dyneema line and pull the line back into itself, locking the loop into the line. The harder you pull, the tighter the outer fibers will be, causing the line inside to be stuck.

During our process of making kite lines, we load the lines to make sure that your lines have equal stretch and are equal in length. Cutting lines under load is a very important step!

“Did you know that there will always be minor differences between production batches? At The Line Smith, we only use the same production run for your lineset, making sure both lines perform the same!”

When the new lineset is complete, we will ship it to you—a set of perfectly made lines, pre-stretched, low elongation, and perfect to the millimeter. Now you connect them to the bar and check the length! Perfection!

Now you’ll start loading the lines with those storm sessions and big jumps. A lot more load will be on the front lines than on the rear, causing more of that “air” to be pulled out of the line. As the fibers get tighter, the line becomes a tiny bit longer.

Let’s take a 22-meter line, for example. After 20 hours, it could be 22 meters and 5 centimeters (22.05). This is an increase of 0.05%. Yes, that’s right, absolutely nothing! However, kites are very sensitive to any difference in line length, causing the kite to possibly oversheet. We always say that up to 3 cm of difference is not a problem for most kites. More than that, and you will start to feel something is off.

Setting Time
It’s nothing more than air leaving the lines and the fibers of the lines taking their “permanent” shape. Due to production steps, it’s required to have some air left in the line after braiding; otherwise, we simply can’t splice them.
So no your lines are not "stretching" it's just are that leaves the line.

At The Line Smith, we are always working on new methods and trying new lines with the best length stability. The Premium SK99+ lines of The Line Smith have outstanding length stability and do not require much adjustment after the setting time. Other stock lines have constant elongation of the fibers and line shrinkage due to dirt penetrating the lines, making them thicker and shorter.

Listen to the episode with the Line Smith