Hi,
I can't believe I finished the sailmaking and assembling today! Another step checked off the list :) After everything was finished, I just stood there for half an hour and stared at the bundle, in total disbelieve what I have created. Amazing feeling.
I sticked very close to your incredibly helpful documents, Arne. Thank you for all the work you put in them! It took me about 70-80h to sew the sail, which is a bit longer than the numbers Arne estimated for his sails - which comes probably due to me not beeing able to suppres some perfectionistic issues... However, I did change some minor changes:
- when delivered, the color of the 50 mm webbing was unbearable - very different to the color displayed in the online shop. It happens. That's why I wrapped the hem around the whole webbing, instead of sewing the webbing onto the hem.
- I guess one sticks to the tools one knows: As I am quite familiar with CAD (and there was no way to get a 5m wooden spline to where I cut the panels), I draw the round edges for the barrel type camber with CAD. I then linearized the curve, so that the deviation between round curve and linearized curve was below 3mm. The rest was diligent work: marking those point on the template. I guess it's just another way to make things more complicated...
- As I did not have any spare batten tube for fitting the batten loops on the sail, I made cardboard dummies: just wrapped some thin cardboard around the actual battens to get the correct dimensions and fixated them with tesa. Worked as charm.
In the process, some questions arose:
- As I understand, the aluminium battens are usually not seawater resistant grade nor painted or sealed or so. At least that is what I used. Any problems with corrosion?
- Is there a good knot to secure batten parrels and HK parrels to the aluminium battens? I did some tests with the prusik knot: it holds well, as long as loaded. I imagine when the parrels are slack and flogging, the Prusik will losen and slip. Any experience with this? Alternatively I would stick with Arnes way of using hose clamps, but would rather stay with strings only if possible.
- I find it quite expensive to let the mast head and mast collar be manufactured. Also, the workshops I asked are quite busy and it would take too long. So, I was thinking to build those from grp by myself. It would be very helpful if someone would be so kind to share some working designs. (I've been searching in the knowledge base: the only relevant article I found should be in issue 66 - which is unfortunately not available online...)
The next steps will be ordering those expensive ball bearing blocks for the halyard, and attaching as many rigging to the sail bundle as possible by now. Then store it away until slip day. And of course, manufacture the mast head and collar.
Cheers,
Paul
PS: The whole sail was sewed by a standard sewing machine: Pfaff Hobbymaster 917. Needle size: 120 or 130 standard universal needles (no needles were broken at all - but some got blunt). Worked okay, not perfect! I got the sewing machine from ebay for almost nothing - if it would have been anything expensive, I wouldn't dare it. 4 Layers of Swela Outgaard are just okay, 6 Layers almost fried the machine - it helped to partly sew inside the roof top at around 0°C... Interestingly, when there was webbing involved it was a lot easier to sew, 6 layers fabric + webbing was no problem at all. Most frightening was 3 layers of webbing + 9 layers of fabric (luckily, only about 10 cm of sewing): It took combined effort of the motor and the hand crank wheel - and the wheel almost cracked of. But it worked.