Sail-making

[CliveR]

Thanks everyone. Yes my mother was a master machinist - she did this at home when my brother and I were young - with an old treadle machine to help with the family finances. In later years she had a fully computerised machine and doing stitched tablecloths etc was her hobby while my dad worked in his "shed" making wooden things for the family. Luckily my younger sister is good with the sewing machine so after your advice I am going to outsource the sail making. She lives on the other side of our country but on my next trip over I am going to take the raw sails over and bribe her with a bottle of good red wine to run them up for me. In the meantime I'll plod on with rigging my Occre SS Essex model. Cheers.

 

[Y.T.]

Hi, BigBad. It is important to mention that my sail fabric was painted with water diluted (50 - 50) acrylic medium to keep it flat when constructing the sail. This helps the sail to keep its new shape after wetting and fan drying. I am sure acrylic medium can be even more successfully replaced by water diluted PVA glue also at 50-50 rate. Sail wetting is done from spray bottle.

 

[AntonAtanasov1]

Please give me some advice on thread for sewing canvases. I'm new to the hobby (I've been doing it for about 3 years), but I'm quite passionate and want to sew my own canvases. My question is, which thread would you choose between Gutermann sew all thread, Mara 120 and Skala 200? I've settled on sew all thread, but I'd like to hear your opinion too.

 

[Y.T.]

Please give me some advice on thread for sewing canvases. I'm new to the hobby (I've been doing it for about 3 years), but I'm quite passionate and want to sew my own canvases. My question is, which thread would you choose between Gutermann sew all thread, Mara 120 and Skala 200? I've settled on sew all thread, but I'd like to hear your opinion too.

My suggestion is do not sew the sails. This will look awfully out of scale even with thinnest threads and minimal stitch lengths. Construct the sail using acrylic medium as a glue. Vertical seams between canvass strips are imitated by drawing lines with very hard lead pencil.

 

[Chelseafan]

My suggestion is do not sew the sails. This will look awfully out of scale even with thinnest threads and minimal stitch lengths. Construct the sail using acrylic medium as a glue. Vertical seams between canvass strips are imitated by drawing lines with very hard lead pencil.

I always wanted to make my sails look "heavy" and found I just couldn't get there with fabric. So I turned to silkspan. It works really well. You can re-wet it any number of times. It also takes acrylic paint very well so I could easily add weathering and fading. I use pencils in different shades to simulate stitching.

 

[seadeep]

Thanks Darivs. My ex-wife and I were just reminiscing about the old Singers our grandmothers used- they had foot pedals instead of electric to operate the machine, so you didn’t need electricity to run them. They had rocker pedals and a pulley system to turn the device and bob the needle up and down. I guess it was Singer’s original design. Boy, they probably cost a lot of money nowadays as antiques lol. Amazing to see the technology that developed. Like shipbuilding!

Sadly, what I've seen is that the machines have been tossed and the buyers repurpose the tables they were mounted in. Kind of a shame...

My mother (now long deceased) used one of those treadle powered sewing machines (yes, a Singer), right up until the 1990's. I bought her an electric machine with all sorts of fancy stitches and other features, and she absolutely hated it. I ended up having to return it a few weeks later and she went back to her beloved foot powered machine. Still... foot powered seems better than the ones I've seen out of Asian markets that are hand cranked (right hand cranking while the left hand somehow manages all the material handling). I have neither the dexterity or skill for either scenario.

 

[Signet]

I used Olha Batchvarov's method for my Ragusian Carrack:


You'll find a brief view of this method on here Carrack video here. I know she has better/longer videos of this method, but can't find the right now. I'm sure a search of her web site will result in several.

 

[John Mitchell]

Hi guys and gals!

I’m a relative novice and I’m learning to make sails. My problem is that I’m trying to get a slight “bowing” of my sails to simulate wind-filled sails on my schooner. I used a roll of a plastic “foam” as a base (as a form then covering it with wax paper and the airbrushing a light application of white acrylic paint on them and let them dry hoping they would stiffen up and achieve the proper curve but after they dried they were still limp and it didn’t work.

I was thinking of applying dilute white PVA glue with a paint brush and letting it dry on the form but I don’t want to mess it up.

Can anyone advice me of a good technique?

I have made three boats with full sails. On the first two I shaped the sails over wine bottles. I used a clear shellac to get them to hold their shape. They are still holding their shape since 1983. On my most recent build, the Prince de Neufchatel, the sails were too big for wine bottles. So I used large balloons of various sizes. I used a water based clear polyurethane to get them to hold their shape.

Also, I sewed in a thin wire on the bottom of the sails to help shape them. I used a stiff wire instead of thread as sheets to hold them away from the ship so they appear to be in a strong wind. The thin stiff wire on the bottom of the sails was necessary for attaching the stiff "sheet" to them. Otherwise the sail would have eventually bent at the corner where the sheet is attached.

 

[BigBad]

Thanks again YT. I’ll try both the dilute acrylic and dilute PVA glue. I’m gonna experiment with both techniques. I have a good amount of white cotton so I’m thinking maybe the dilute PVA might be good because if I use the tan one it might slightly color the material a little beige or I can use a beige or cream colored acrylic.

 

[BigBad]

John, thanks for your contribution. Interestingly, I also bought several large balloons to use to shape my sails although I haven’t used them yet. I just made a couple of sails for my Herreshoff 12 1/2 using two “helping hands” to hold the sail corners with dilute PVA glue to stiffen them and it worked very well. I didn’t use a weight like Batcherov, I just brought the corners together a little and it worked fine because the glue weighted down the material.
I’m going to try the balloons with clear water-based polyurethane for the sails on my Bluenose schooner which has a larger mainsail.
Interesting idea about using the wire. Looks great!