Stavanger, Sat
David, your progress sounds very good, in particular considering you are making two sails, over 100sqm together.
I kept record of the time I used when I made Malena’s first cambered sail (32sqm) in 1994: I made the sail in 6 days, spending 40hours. I used every time-saving tricks I knew; the 5 lower panels were identical and I used the dead-easy amateur method a to join the batten panels. With the canvas coming in 160cm width, that was wide enough to span one batten panel, rounding plus batten pockets and all. Only in the two top panels did I have to join two widths. I bet the total length of seams were shorter than on most junk sails of that size. I had only made a couple of small jibs plus a simple Ljungström sail before so this was still quite a step ahead.
The roping took me eight hours sharp, using the rope type roping (no webbing involved). This sounds incredibly fast, but since the method only involves groups of 3-4 stitches with intervals of 12 – 15cm, that speeds up the progress with a factor of 5 – 10, I guess. What consumed much time was splicing in all the hoops for the batten ends to rest in. Those six battens have 12 ends and with two splices per hoop, that meant 24 splices! In the four corners of the sail I didn’t make hoops. I just let the bolt rope follow the edge of the sail around the corner and then placed one group of stitches 2-3cm on each side of the corner. This roping has held up until the sail was finally scrapped this autumn.
Good luck with your work; I am looking forward to seeing the result!
Arne
PS: Could I suggest that you fit telltales to the leech of the sails?
PPS: To have a look at that Ljungström sail, check "20110722 The poor man’s Ljungström Rig", found under the letter section in "my" folder.