Thankyou Arne and Eric,

I will stick with the zigzag and hopefully I won’t have to remove any. Tomorrow I will start seaming and joining the bottom 2 panels. Exciting times!

Bonjour

If I understood well the Arnes "bolt rope" concept the rope or webbing should be stiffer than the sailcloth, in order to transfer the load from the sail cloth to the corners of the pannel and the sail. Otherwise the "bolt rope" or webbing would not take the effort. If the webbing is sufficiently stiff it will be much stiffer than the stitching were the thread is already going up and down through the two or three material layers...

You may, mainly for intellectual matter, specially because it is at no cost, add a little extra streaching by using zigzag or half zigzag to the stitching.

Anyway the relatve streatching of the sail cloth and the webbing is much more important.

Eric

Thanks Jan,

Point taken on the name of the Boltrope/Luff reinforcement. Why Im curious is Arnes method stresses that this part of the sail takes almost all the strain leaving the cloth to do its work. My thinking is, when the seam and the webbing are combined they become a unit and not stretching is their job.... but i could be wrong. Im happy to sew it either way but thought it would be a good exercise to aski the JR community. Cheers

I’m currently making a cambered sail for my Farr5000 I am going to use a polyester webbing for the bolt rope. Looking at the comparison of straight and zigzag stitching, the straight has greater resistance to stretch. I’m guessing that would make it preferable for the multiple stitching on that part of the sail. Does anyone have any experience in this regard. Cheers Alex Holds ( the only Junkie in Western Australia it seems)