David Tyler wrote:

Hummer?? No! More like a utilitarian 4WD vehicle. An old-style Land Rover, with no attention paid to cosmetic appearance, would be a better metaphor. There's no way that I'd attempt a big sail of heavy cloth with less than a Sailrite.

Ok, but Peter was to do "some canvas work". A "big sail of heavy cloth" is something else, if my Reliant Robin English serves me...

A.

Peter,

there is the ideal world, and then there is the real world. The Sailrite is the Hummer of the amateur sewing machines, but who needs a Hummer?

I have a Pfaff 360, a domestic sewing machine, made in the early sixties. It is not very big and it has no walking foot, but it can sew 4mm wide zigzag, and it can sew with up to T90 thread, which is actually thicker than we need. I have made eight sails with that machine, including a staysail and a gaff mizzen from thick Duradon. There is a lot of info on the web about this machine and similar models.

Arne

I left my Sailrite aboard Tystie, which was good news for Martin but bad news for me. It was too heavy to ship home. It's the ideal amateur sailmaker's machine, but a big investment for just one or two small sails. I don't propose to make any more big sails, so I trawled eBay for a reconditioned semi-industrial tabletop machine with straight and zigzag stitches, a rigid metal frame and as simple as possible. Domestic machines nowadays have a zillion different stitch patterns, none of which we want. I bought an Alfa, but there are many different makes that would do the job of sailmaking. It came with a walking foot attachment, which was rubbish - not recommended. The built-in walking foot is one of the things that makes the Sailrite able to sew large sails. The other is that the needle carrying part of the machine on the Sailrite stays vertical as it moves from side to side, and this is a feature that allows it to punch through thick cloth without bending the needle. It's not often found on other machines. My Alfa was able to make my 22 sq m sail, out of 8.8oz/sq yd cloth, but only just. I had to take very great care to avoid too many thicknesses of cloth, and ease the needle through where many thicknesses were unavoidable. Still, it got the  job done without too many bent needles (get in a supply of needles before you start). I wouldn't attempt anything larger on it. Making the same size sail from lighter cloth would be easy.

Going back many years, the first sails I made were sewn with a positively ancient black-and-gold Singer, but electric and with zigzag stitching, an investment of £20 in a secondhand emporium. It served very well until I overloaded it and damaged the timing mechanisms too much, and it was never the same again.

David Tyler will probably have a lot of useful thoughts on this but ideally you need an industrial type machine with a walking foot, which is capable of punching through several layers of canvas. The ideal machine is the Sailrite which are made for heavy canvas and sail making. In New Zealand I purchased a new Chinese made Mercury machine which seems identical to the Sailrite apart from the heavy flywheel on the Sailrite. This cost NZ$500 new with the extra long throat, or arm. I use the Sailrite manual for the machine which shows how identical they are. I have used this now for a sail cover, bimini, and other canvas project on the boat, and for repairing horse covers. I bought new because any second hand machines were of doubtful age and quality and so the price of the Mercury compared very well, and it came with an extended warranty. So far it has performed well.