Kurt Jon Ulmer wrote:Well Paul,
Actually, there's nothing that I would rather not have pointed out. I'm not religious about any flat this or traditional that.
But, if people start to get the impression that you need a machine shop and engineering calculator to create a proper junk rig, we will have allowed a barrier, when the tradition of junk rigs has been to enable rather than discourage. Colvin is quoted as saying something like, "How bad would [sails] have to be, not to work at all?" Flat junk sails work 'Okay' I reckon.
I'm not against cambered junk sails or wingsails or innovation or racing. I just like to promote a few of the essential timeless qualities of junk rigs: inexpensive, robust, patchable, easily-designed, forgiving, simple, satisfactory-if-not-optimum, durable, home-made, beautiful, novel... and reefed in ten seconds. Did I mention inexpensive?
The natural distribution of strain that I mentioned first in this discussion, is one reason the rig survived centuries in China, and decades of Hasler & McLeod's working-out in Britain. I'm just choosing not to mess with the basics, as I come to appreciate them.
I look up at our slightly-curving blue sails with awe, just from knowing that we created them ourselves on the fire hall floor, they're good enough, they cost very little, they're the product of a long long line of creative thought on simple principles, plus I got to add my own particular... wrinkles, too.
Regards,
Kurt
Dear Kurt,
Sorry (only half :-) but I could not resist yanking your chain (you did start this thread after all). Flat sails are the simplest form of junk sail and I have no argument with that. But putting shape into a sail does not need to be in anyway complicated nor need it add much more time to the making of the sail. At the simplest level, use Vincent Reddish's methods. Cheap, simple and very low cost. You do not even need a tape measure as every thing is based on ratios but an ability to do multiplication would be handy (as would a tape measure). If you do not know of Vincent Reddish, check out the NL's.
Next up would be Arn's methods. Super easy and very basic sail making. If you cannot build a cambered sail using Arne's methods and instructions( see
http://www.junkrigassociation.org/arne), you probably cannot build a flat sail either.
Most complex would be the shelf foot method and various other broad seaming methods and even here, David Tyler has written up a simple method in the NL's.
What I am saying is that a cambered sail can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it. The choice is up to the individual concerned.
However that is for cambered sails. So far, the above does not apply to softwings (at least the kind that are effective). They are indeed difficult, complex and time consuming to make and if you are making the type that David and I have made, you do need reasonable sailmaking skills and also good workshop skills. However I am not advocating that everyone should build softwings, only pionting out the cambered sails are neither terribly difficult nor very much more time consuming than ordinary flat sails. I do however believe that the extra effort that is required for a cambered sail is well rewarded.