Good sailcloth for JR

  • 12 Dec 2017 14:29
    Reply # 5625306 on 5624076
    Deleted user
    Arne Kverneland wrote:

    Some years ago a few e-mails flew back and forth between me and Stuart K Hopkins who runs a sailmaker's shop (Dabbler sails)  in Virginia,  US, not far from Chesapeake Bay.

    (text deleted)

    I looked up his website, right now, and he seems to produce cambered panel junk sails now.



    Arne

    Two surprises on the Dabbler site.  Pictures by this maker of traditional small craft sails shows a laid out junk sail panel that is very recognizable, especially to those of us who have used Arne's barrel cut method. He also directs the curious to Arne's files on our JRA site. Also the sail shown under construction is for another Com-pac, this one a 23.
  • 12 Dec 2017 03:02
    Reply # 5624291 on 5623571
    robert self wrote:
    Erik and Evi Menzel Ivey wrote:For me, the Weathermax 80 has consistently developed a slight amount of puckering along the seams.
    Have you experimented with 2-sided tape and staples? This has worked well for me using a bottom-feed zig-zag/straight Brother TZ-1 on Odyssey/seatbelt/sunbrella/etc.
    Robert ~ not so much staples, but all seams were put together with basting tape, specific for canvas.  It made no difference.


    Erik

  • 11 Dec 2017 22:01
    Reply # 5624076 on 1206989
    Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Some years ago a few e-mails flew back and forth between me and Stuart K Hopkins who runs a sailmaker's shop (Dabbler sails)  in Virginia,  US, not far from Chesapeake Bay.

    One advice he gave me about sail covers was to make them from dark blue or black material. The sun heat would then ensure that any damp left in the sail would evaporate and this prevented the sails from getting mouldy.

    I looked up his website, right now, and he seems to produce cambered panel junk sails now.

    Of course, I didn't find any suitable dark canvas for Ingeborg's sail cover, so I used some Odyssey III that I had plenty of  -  white.


    Arne

    Last modified: 12 Dec 2017 13:33 | Anonymous member (Administrator)
  • 11 Dec 2017 19:41
    Reply # 5623880 on 5622622
    Darren Bos wrote:6)  Use a sailcover.  Regardless of which synthetic you use, a sailcover is going to protect if from UV and extend its life and therefore reduce its impact.  I have no idea what the best care would be for a cotton sail to extend its life.  Somehow you have to wait until it is dry to put the sailcover on?  I live in Vancouver!!!
    If you make your sail out of sail cover material, as I intend to do, you don't need to use a sail cover, and therefore you don't need to buy additional fabric.  Odyssey was a failure: on the other hand Top Gun lasts 'forever' even uncovered.  mehitabel's sails are still going strong and the NZ UV is very, very high due to being so close to the hole in the ozone layer and having little air pollution.
  • 11 Dec 2017 15:48
    Reply # 5623571 on 5622637
    Deleted user
    Erik and Evi Menzel Ivey wrote:For me, the Weathermax 80 has consistently developed a slight amount of puckering along the seams.
    Have you experimented with 2-sided tape and staples? This has worked well for me using a bottom-feed zig-zag/straight Brother TZ-1 on Odyssey/seatbelt/sunbrella/etc.
    Last modified: 11 Dec 2017 15:52 | Deleted user
  • 11 Dec 2017 13:12
    Reply # 5623376 on 1206989
    I'll be using Swela Outguard for the 25-28m2 sail I'm making for my Galion 22.

    The weight is 190g/m2, which I think is good for a sail at this size category, whereas the 270g/m2 might be overkill (unless used extensively offshore, or maybe even then). As for other details, it seems quite a lot like WeatherMax.

    The fabric is quite nice to sew, I used it on the top panel of my last sail (15m2 for a 17ft trailer sailer).

    (And yes, the ecological aspects are very important to me, and usein polyester is not a piece of cake.)

  • 11 Dec 2017 01:42
    Reply # 5622922 on 5622637
    Erik and Evi Menzel Ivey wrote:For me, the Weathermax 80 has consistently developed a slight amount of puckering along the seams.  This in spite of testing all sorts of combination of thread size (69 and 92), needle sizes (16-20) and points (standard and ball), upper and lower thread tension, and pressure foot pressure.  This is on a commercial/industrial Bernina 217 sewing machine with a zig zag stitch of 6 mm (+/-) and a 5mm stitch length.  Web research and talking to several industrial sewing places makes me think that the cloth indeed can easily pucker sew but people do report success.  Here is an older fabrication manual that "hints" at possible difficulties.  I have also sewn on webbing and velcro and the puckering there is more understandable since these are two different materials.
    Hi Erik & Evi, I'm currently making 5 sails from Weathermax 80 ranging from 100 Sq Ft to over 600 Sq Ft. I'm using a Sailrite LZ1 with zig zag and a walking foot and also a Pfaff 130 (zig zag & straight) without any puckering... I wonder if your feed dogs could be worn or the feed timing is slightly out.
  • 10 Dec 2017 20:15
    Reply # 5622637 on 1206989

    Just some thought and my current experience with sewing our sail.  I looked at the various option of marine polyester "canvas" type cloths such as Top Gun, Top Notch, Odyssey III, and Weathermax 80.  We opted for Weathermax partially because it is reversible, has a very nice hand, and came in the color we wanted (burgundy or tanbark).  I have now sewn about 90% of the sail (I'll write more on that under the Freedom 40 thread) and would advise anybody contemplating using a particular cloth to get a sufficiently large sample of the intended cloth and sew it with the machine of choice to test some of the following:

    • specific thread
    • seam design
      • stitch type - zz or straight
      • single or double stitch
      • seam width
    • number of layers of cloth
    • attaching webbing, velcro, or a pressing an eye.
    For me, the Weathermax 80 has consistently developed a slight amount of puckering along the seams.  This in spite of testing all sorts of combination of thread size (69 and 92), needle sizes (16-20) and points (standard and ball), upper and lower thread tension, and pressure foot pressure.  This is on a commercial/industrial Bernina 217 sewing machine with a zig zag stitch of 6 mm (+/-) and a 5mm stitch length.  Web research and talking to several industrial sewing places makes me think that the cloth indeed can easily pucker sew but people do report success.  Here is an older fabrication manual that "hints" at possible difficulties.  I have also sewn on webbing and velcro and the puckering there is more understandable since these are two different materials.

    I did some side by side comparison with Top Notch 9, which was our second choice, and and did not have the same difficulties on my sewing machine setup.   I will see how much the puckering annoys me when the current sail is set.  I got one more sail to do, maybe two....

    David:  I have looked at the Code Zero cloths and by chance just ordered a new genoa for my Wylie Wabbit 24 made from it.  It is a laminate of very thin Mylar film and taffeta with unidirectional yarns in between.  Very light, strong, and not that expensive.  I agree that it may be a good choice for some high-tech looking junk sails.  Maybe not on a Freedom though...

    Erik & Evi     


  • 10 Dec 2017 19:33
    Reply # 5622622 on 1206989

    I suspect the day will come where we have new high-tech options for sails that are made of friendlier renewable materials.  Until then I suspect polyester sailcloth is the best choice.  Although it is easy to look at Polyester as an unfriendly product because it is made form non-renewable fossil fuels, with some thought it has features that can offset this.

    1) It is very long-lived in a junk sail.  Depending on use, a decade seems reasonable.  I didn't even consider cotton because I was completely unfamiliar with cotton sails and all that I had read suggested that you couldn't expect anywhere near the durability or performance of polyester.  Remember sail performance also counts, good sails mean less motoring.

    2) Polyester sailcloth can be recycled and reused.  There are now quite a few folks remaking sailcloth into all sorts of consumer goods after its first life as a sail.  Most of this is from short-lived racing sails, but if there is good cloth left in your sails when you replace them, there is nothing to stop you or someone else from putting it to productive use.

    3)  Ordering factory seconds like David suggests makes huge sense.  If there is not a market for these materials the manufacturer has to dispose of the material, with obvious negative impacts.

    4)  Consider where the sailcloth is made, polyester sailcloth made in the EU is going to have a smaller ecological footprint than something made in china where the same kind of environmental protections are not in place.

    5)  Buy the best fabric you can.  Although figuring out the exact footprint of a material is complex, usually a good way to reduce the impact of a material is to buy the one with the greatest longevity.  For me, I chose to use the real sailcloth, because I felt that with a sailcover it would give the greatest longevity.  One of the sailcloth experiments that seems not to have worked is Odyssey.  The short lifespan a number of users have had with this material put it in the ecologically unfriendly category.

    6)  Use a sailcover.  Regardless of which synthetic you use, a sailcover is going to protect if from UV and extend its life and therefore reduce its impact.  I have no idea what the best care would be for a cotton sail to extend its life.  Somehow you have to wait until it is dry to put the sailcover on?  I live in Vancouver!!!

    7)  Use dark coloured cloth.  Although the addition of UV inhibitors matters a lot, generally speaking the darker the colour of a synthetic material the better its UV resistance.

    8)  There are lots of used sails around that could maybe be re-cut into a junk sail.  This would be a bit labour intensive and pointy sails don't provide the greatest geometry in terms of making panels for a junk sail.  But, if you used vertically seamed panels, you could likely make it work.  You'd probably have a few different weights of sailcloth from the different bermudan sails you'd need to use and could use the heaviest weight material for the top of the junk sail (storm sail) and the lightest weight material for the bottom (fills with wind more easily).

  • 10 Dec 2017 19:07
    Reply # 5622595 on 5622193
    Arne Kverneland wrote:I guess, the best thing we can do as consumers of stuff, is to avoid too much use-and-throw practice. Better keep and maintain things for as long as we can ( sails, boats, clothes, cars, or whatever...)

    Arne

    It's the difference between consumerism and materialism.  Consumers enjoy buying stuff, materialists enjoy owning stuff.  And if you enjoy owning something, you don't want to throw it away and buy something new, you want to keep it as long as possible, repairing and restoring stuff so that it lasts.  The money saved can still be put back into the economy, employing people in carbon neutral services or, dare I suggest, being given to organisations that are trying to make the world a better place for all of us that live in it.
       " ...there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in junk-rigged boats" 
                                                               - the Chinese Water Rat

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