 |
| From plastic, to paper, to cloth, to finished sail |
As I said in my previous blog, I have to start off by creating a paper pattern for the sails. I get this from copying the vacuum formed sails that came with the model, or from sail planes from the internet or from a book that I own. Once the pattern is created, I cut it out and use a pencil to transfer it to my cotton sheet cloth. Since the pencil will represent the seams and reef points on the finished sail, I have to copy it to both sides of the sail and since light goes through the cloth they have to match pretty closely. It is not as hard as it sounds. I transfer the pattern to one side of the cloth and literally trace through the cloth to mark the other side. The material has to be marked for hemming of the edges of the sails.
 |
| One of my sources for sail plans |
Once the pattern is on the cloth, I cut it out. Using a product called Stop Fray, I treat the edges of the cut sail so they won't unravel. Then I use a hemming glue to double hem them so there are no ragged edges to the cloth. The final step is to carefully add the bolt rope around the edge of the finished sail. This is done by carefully running a bead of hemming glue along an edge of the sail, then gluing the heavy thread to that edge. It is kind of a pain but seems to be working.
So far, I have all of the sail patterns created, and over the weekend I transferred, cut, and hemmed all of the sails for the foremast. I only got the fore topsail set up with the bolt rope.
 |
| Yard arms are up |
So far I have tried to build the ship in approximate order the real one would have been done, but I think for the sails I will go backwards and mount the sails at the top of the masts first, then work my way down. This is because as you mount a sail you reduce easy access to areas of the mast and deck of the ship for rigging. Since everything has to go down the mast, leaving the bottom until last seems to be sensible.
No comments:
Post a Comment