1:24 Pearwood French Longboat from Unicorn Model

[Tim Green]

Sails ... today I punched all the 1.2mm holes in the foresail and then installed the rings to mast and sail. Before punching them, I'd glued the cloth in the hem together with 50/50 white glue. The rings are 1mm thick.



I had tried just pushing a pin through the material and shoving the ring through that - didn't like it - the splice in the ring caught on the cloth in the hole - and it just didn't look right. Fuzzy holes. And I'd tried punching holes in the sails without stiffening the cloth with glue first - those were fuzzy holes too. Here's a pic with 1mm fuzzy holes punched into non-glue stiffened cloth.


Tried the 1.5mm punch, but it took up too much of the sail. The 1.5mm hole is at the bottom in this pic. The rest are 1.2mm. These were, of course, glue stiffened holes.


I bought this set of 9 punches off of Amazon

• 
• They worked fine on the sailcloth that came with the kit. I like em, IOW. But note that I haven't tried em on anything else.

Here's how I glued the holes - while using tweezers to push the rope inside the hem out to the edge of the sail, I dipped the tip of the spatula into some glue and massaged it into the sail where the hole is to be punched - this was to glue both sides of the hem together before punching - to make a cleaner hole.


Next - the mainsail - waiting for the glue stiffened holes to dry so I can punch em.