Blog
additional details of Project Cedrus development, product updates & news
First failure & lessons learned
a tough email to receive It is not possible for me to describe the emotions after receiving an email from a customer with the subject line “mast problem.” I am not a skilled enough writer to communicate the immediate feelings of fear, sadness, frustration, and even...
Midsummer Updates & Pricing Changes
Naish/Takuma Carbon Mast Adapter August 1, the peak of summer in Seattle and arguably here way too soon. It has definitely been a challenging/weird/scary few months as we continue to battle this virus and process all of the uncertainty it is bringing to our lives. To...
Corona Updates
I hope this post finds you safe and healthy as we all witness the significant changes occurring in our world due to COVID-19. Like many small businesses, the corona virus is impacting Project Cedrus in ways I would have not predicted, although I am confident it will...
Baby’s first kite trip
Thanks Alaska Airlines for your generous baggage allowance! Happy Thanksgiving everyone! My family(!) just returned from a week in Los Barriles, MX. Last time I checked in we returning from a babymoon, so it felt a little crazy to be on our first kite trip with that...
Maui Reflections
Photo shoot with the new decal It’s hard to believe I started Project Cedrus nearly 3 years ago. A recent trip to Maui for some product testing and a break from Seattle winter gave me some time to reflect on this experience. I actually began thinking about improving...
Flight Testing
A work trip bought me down to Chile this January, and with careful planning and pre-shipping of the work equipment, I was able to carry S/N 01-001 across international boarders for some extended flight testing in warm steady winds. Embalse Puclaro, Chile Despite the...
Identity
Dorsal, Cedar, Feather One of my favorite stages of starting a business is the branding process, likely because it gives me the opportunity to work with skilled creative types who I've always envied deeply, yet the process feels so foreign when compared to the...
New Friends
One of the coolest aspects of this project has been meeting passionate people and making new friends. The kite community is wonderful, and it's a big reason many of us patiently suffered through hours of getting drug across sand or body dragging for lost boards....
Credits
Bob from Bay Area Machinist, the best machinist I’ve had the privilege of working with. Kudos for taking the biggest risk of anyone and starting your own capital-intensive machine shop. Thanks for not charging me aerospace rates for molds and parts, or this project...
Testing
Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) is valuable at early phases of product design, when the design space is wide open and you are not focused on the nitty gritty problems involved with actually building the product. However, at no point of the design process does...
Fuselage
Arguably the most over designed components on modern foils are the fuselages. Whether carbon or aluminum, the solid section is far stronger and heavier than needed. The excess weight is especially critical given that it’s cantilevered at the end of a meter long mast....
IP & Innovation
As an engineer, I simply want to work with others to design and build the most elegant structures possible. I don’t have the time or skills to market, sell, and manage distribution or customer service of a hydrofoil. With that in mind, my initial goal for this project...
Wings
Wings are extremely subjective, and not something to be “optimized” in the same sense as a primary structural component like a mast or fuselage. What is stable and smooth to one rider can be slow and difficult to control for another. Like surfboards, fins, and kites...
Aero
Foils are essentially airplanes in water, and aerospace is an extremely diverse industry. You can focus on structures as I did, or be a software engineer developing flight control systems, or spend an entire career reducing the drag of a winglet. Admittedly, I'm no...
Sizing & Analysis
Throughout most of my career, I’ve been fortunate to have really smart aerodynamic & CFD engineers tell me how stiff and strong I need to make my wing, or reliability engineers how high an iPad must be able to fall without breaking. Designing a foil from scratch,...
Design & Architecture
From afar, Project Cedrus might not look that different from other foils on the market. But it is, thanks to unique architecture that allows for a range of manufacturing processes. Material and process are integral. The manufacturing processes you use for carbon fiber...
Motivation
“Black aluminum” is a term used in the aerospace industry to describe composite structures or components that are not optimized for the material and process. Essentially, it refers to taking an existing aluminum component, and making the exact same design out of a...
Introduction
Comprised of cellulose fibers in lignin matrix, wood is the oldest and all natural composite material. Exploited by our earliest ancestors for tools, shelter, and energy, it was the west coast First Nations who harnessed the most raw form of felled cedar trees in the...
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