Annie,

I like the lapped seams you are talking about for the same reasons.  Arne's double/triple sewn seam looks similarly easy to do without turning anything over, so I may do it too.

Did you sew your Fantail sail out of Odyssey III, or something similar?  I'm just trying to get a feel for how different the sewing we've got do will be.

I think I understand how you assembled panels and batten pockets.  I didn't do batten shelf camber in CAD to get my panel construction, so I plan to do something more like Arne's normal method instead.

And most importantly--thanks for pointing out that there is a place for just doing things instead of worrying about what could go wrong.  After I'm done, I'll figure out what is good enough and what isn't.  But I tend to research and think a lot, and (sometimes) not have to do a job two or three times as a result.  (I've been chewing on this rig design for three years now, even if I didn't really start serious work until a couple months ago!)

Barry

Oh boy - I'm so pleased I didn't read all this before I sewed up my sails or I would have never been able to decide what to do!  If you look at the photos in Annie Hill's Sailmaking Photos (third folder of files) you can see how I attached my batten pockets.  I am perfectly confident that they will last for as long as the sail, bar possibly a bit of chafe.
I did a simple lapped seam for 3 reasons:

1 it meant I didn't have to turn the sail over
2 I could mark the seam allowance and have a nice line to align the cloth with  This is great when the double-sided tape comes agley because of all the bunching of the sailcloth.
3 it made it very easy to run along two rows of stitching.

We sewed Badger's sails this way, initially also thinking that there was still space for a third row of stitching, should the first two fail.  They never did.  As Arne says there is so little strain on the fabric that it's hard to believe.  At least with our more conventional sails.  I don't know if David's rig puts more stresses on the material.

You will also see that I had to join pieces of fabric to make larger ones.  I kept the straight grain aligned and then cut them like they were off the roll.  If you see what I mean.

Haven't, of course, tried the sail yet, but whatever my worries about the rig, I feel confident that this part of it will stand up to normal wear and tear.

Stavanger, Thursday

                        Joining batten panels

In a letter above from Barry and Meps (28. Feb) they ponder over the way I join batten panels at the battens ("Amater method A or B). Could this taylor’s seam really be strong enough? All I know is that Malena’s sail has held up for about 16 summers now. Her sail is now falling apart from sunrot and flogging (the present owner doesn’t tie up the sail bundle after use), but the seams along the batten pockets and elsewhere have held up just fine. Malena hasn’t sailed much offshore, but still, if something was badly wrong with the method, the sail would have failed years ago. The fact that the stress along the battens is so low has to be experienced to be believed. An extra bonus if you go for the Amateur method B (used on the dinghy Broremann) is that the first seam is even better protected from shafe or sunshine than with the Amateur method A which I used on Malena. Still, don’t let these worries stop you. Go on and assemble the panels in conventional sailmaker’s style if you don’t trust the Malena method. This will be a lot more work, but that is not the end of the world.

If you are to cut camber using the barrel cut method, I suggest you cut full size patterns from paper. Placing the patterns over the sail cloth, you will easily see how much you have to add to the cloth. Just make separate paper patterns for these extra lenses (barrel sides).

The seat belt webbing sounds fine to me and the stuff makes fitting loops at the batten ends easy. Still, if you have doubts about its stiffness, I suggest you hand-stitch on a boltrope on the backside of the sail after the webbing is on. This can be done fairly quickly (4-6 hours pr sail) and then you get somewhere to tie the boom and yard to the sail too.

Cheers,

Arne

Barry,

Yes, I am familiar with the pipe C-Clip method of controlling a sail, and I was expecting to do it.

I was hoping that batten pockets could be sewn on without sending a roll through the machine at all.

If I use seams that are stronger than those really simple ones, planning ahead so that only one panel needs to go under the arm sounds like a real good idea.  Thank you Annie & David for pointing it out (and making me feel stupid for not figuring it out myself!)  I am sure to do a lot of planning ahead...or regretting my failures to!

But how do I sew on the batten pocket?  Seam the pocket on both top and bottom?  Fold it in half and sew both layers of the pocket to the panel seam?