Materials arrived!

So now that the holidays are behind us, I ordered and received my sail making materials.  Exciting!  Here's the inventory of goods:

At the top are the panel development plans as generated by SailcutCAD, my GIS notebook filled with Michael Storer's plans and helpful tips from other builders, the roll of 4 oz. Dacron, spools of V69 thread in chestnut and white, metric tape measure and stick, edge tapes of different widths, double stick seam basting tape, sewing palm and sail twine for hand sewing, spur grommets with die set and hole punch, brass rings and liners with die set.  Yay!

So this is what SailcutCAD creates as plans.  It has been noted by seasoned sailmakers/designers that a computer program is little good if you don't have a plotter to print the design directly to the cloth.  That would certainly make things easier.  But I'm not an "easier" kind of guy!  So I will transfer these coordinates onto the cloth by hand using rulers, straight edges and beer.

These rings will reinforce the corners of the sail (peak, throat, tack and clew) as well as the intermediate tack and clew of the two reefs.  The technique is to cut the hole, place a ring over the hole, then hand sew twine around the ring and the hole's edge in a wrapping manner so that the ring gets encased in twine.  Then the brass liner slips through the hole and is pounded flare so that it remains in the hole.  The liner protects the twine from chafing from what ever is used to lash the sail to the spar.  This technique is overkill for the rope lashings and the sort of loads I expect for this sail, but I think it will be fun.  Way too expensive, but fun.

Because the ring and liner approach is so expensive (each ring/liner combo was several dollars) and so labor intensive, I decided to use spur grommets for the multiple lashing points along the sail's head and foot.  These are not the sort found at arts & craft stores.  These are sold by sailors for sailors.

Here are my planning notes on rough measurements, construction, etc.  I will actually use fewer reef points and they will be holes only, no attached strings (nettles).  The holes will be reinforced with hand-sewn rings.  Similar to the brass ring above, a hand sewn ring is made of twine instead and in stiched to the hole's edge in the same manner.  No liner for these as they will normally be out in the flow of the wind.  When conditions require a reduced sail area, these reef point will simply act to gather up neatly the folded cloth as the sail is reefed.  But the stress is carried at the intermediate tack and clew at each end of the boom.

So that's enough salty talk for one post.  It's all I can do refrain from jumping in and pulling an all-nighter lofting, cutting and sewing.  This blog entry will have to satisfy my sailmaking itch for now.  Plus I have a post to add on the Storer forum.  Ciao for now...