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Looking for sewing machine brand and model for making sails

Y.T.

Y.T.

Joined
Sep 3, 2018
Messages
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Location
Toronto, Canada
Hi, I am looking for a sewing machine brand and model for making sails in 1:96 scale. It should be not expensive but high quality sewing machine. It should be able to handle very light weight cotton fabric (batiste), have adjustable stitch length up to zero. No need for any but straight type of stitch.
 
Good luck with that! If you do the math, I think you will find that scale thread will be somewhere around the thickness of a spider web, and a small spider, at that. Beyond that, simply get a machine (and needles) that will handle the thinnest thread you can find, which will, I believe, still be way out of scale. Some people don't mind that, and it's pretty much essential for sailing models, but that's the best you can do. In my early days, I did this and it looks bad by today's standards. I've gotten away with very fine stitching working on small craft in 3/4" to the foot and larger, but that's pushing it.

You'd probably be best off going with the silkspan and acrylic paint technique.


 
I want fully open sales. Silk span is a paper. It will not look like any close to real sail unfurled. I will use batiste. Looks good enough to me.

Stitching thread I use will be Gutterman Scala 360. I can try to unwind it in separate strands. It is like a spider web.

So no sewing machine recommendations from anyone?
 
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Y.T. said:
I want fully open sales. Silk span is a paper. It will not look like any close to real sail unfurled. I will use batiste. Looks good enough to me.
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I don't agree with you.
Look here
Post in thread 'VOC ship The Prins Willem (scale 1:75) Year 1651' https://shipsofscale.com/sosforums/...-willem-scale-1-75-year-1651.6761/post-435159
I tested the method Bob showed. And it is perfect for scale 1/50 or smaller, furled or not. It looks better to me then cloth with sewing stitches way out of scale.
 
Y.T. said:
So no sewing machine recommendations from anyone?
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Any home sewing machine will do just fine if that's what you are looking for, but, honestly, many of us, me included, have plowed the same ground and not found success. Even if you unravel thread, you will probably find that the strands will jam going through the eye of the needle and break repeatedly. Moreover, if it's a 1:96 scale representation you're after, I expect you will be sorely disappointed.

Below is a sail sewn with the finest thread and stitch obtainable on a standard sewing machine. The scale is 3/4" equals one foot. You are working at a scale of 1/8" to the foot or six times smaller. Perhaps this will give you some idea of the difficulty you will encounter. There is a reason nobody recommends attempting what you are contemplating.

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On the other hand, using silkspan strengthened with acrylic paint will provide a very realistic effect, whether furled or set, if the instructions are followed. For a more detailed description of the technique, you can purchase the sail making supplement to David Antscherl's The Fully Framed Model - The Swan Class Sloops for five bucks from Seawatch Books: https://seawatchbooks.com/products/...vised-and-expanded-edition-by-david-antscherl I recommend it highly.
 
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Y.T. said:
There are interesting sales making videos today on YouTube. Here is an example. This is a larger scale to mine but gives good impression.

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Ohla's sailmaking skills are most impressive and her accuracy is commendable, but she is apparently working in a very large scale and I expect that it will still appear out of scale when bent to the model. Even assuming one could find scale thread, fly tying material, perhaps, such handwork at 1:96 would be madness.
 
Hi Bob. I had seen description of some technique where part of fabric is being painted dark and threads being pulled out over unpainted part leaving a thin painted line instead of real stitch. I couldn’t fully understand how this works and what it looks like when completed. Any idea where I can get some better information on this?
 
Y.T. said:
Hi Bob. I had seen description of some technique where part of fabric is being painted dark and threads being pulled out over unpainted part leaving a thin painted line instead of real stitch. I couldn’t fully understand how this works and what it looks like when completed. Any idea where I can get some better information on this?
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I've no idea. I'm familiar with teasing out a warp thread when doing certain types of canvas work at full-size, but not in modeling. It would seem near impossible at any scale size. The standard, and I think best, way to represent stitching in scale sizes is as Steef illustrated in his sail making link above, using a hard and sharp lead pencil to make a subtle light double parallel lines representing an authentic double-stitched lapped seam at the panel edges.
 
Bob Cleek said:
Great sail making and rigging tutorial link! Your real strops are incredibly impressive!
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Thanks. Just patience and you can achieve almost everything.
About the sails, I tried a lot of methods, even a darker thread with a needle weaving in the cloth threads. (Hope I say it right, just look in the clipper link under my name.) But the silkspan, or Japanese paper way is the best I tried. So easy.
 
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