sail making

Rcsailing.net How To ?
1

hi guys
just wondering if that sail making thread. did any good? has anybody tried to make thier own sails? i know i did. with help from members like lester and dan.:zbeer: even alot of other people. :zbeer:. I have made 3 sets of IOM sails. has anybody else done a set. and if so? tell us how they worked
cougar

2

I have been making my own sails for 5 years(since I started this hobby) but the turning point was that thread. Claudio’s gadget was the answer. Simplicity,repeatability and you don’t need a shop full of blocks. I made the Gadjet in less time than it took to make one sailing block and I had about ten blocks(they’re firewood now) and that’s not taking into account the time spent making the jig to make the blocks. Oh, and about fifteen gallons less sawdust. Can you tell I am pumped about the Gadjet. I even had a professional big boat sailmaker comment on how smooth the broadseaming was. I wish we could have gotten a little deeper into luff curves and how to match it to the mast. I’ve tried everything I can think of and I the best I can do is make the curve too generous and then recut after I have sailed the boat a couple of times.
Don

3

Hi guys

What has happened to that thread? I can’t locate it on the forum for some reason…!

4

Try here
http://www.rcsailing.net/forum1/showthread.php?t=3110

While I’ve got your attention have you tried Profili2? It’s for airfoils but it goes down to Re30000.
Don

5

hi lester
good to hear from you. and i wanted to thank you for running that test ,for me on my sails. now i just need to find out how to get the top 1/3 of the main sail to stop twisting. lol :slight_smile: but this is the fun part of the hobby. we get to find out how to do thing right
so far , not many people have tried to build thier own sails it seems
cougar

6

Hi Don

Thanks for the link! Nope, haven’t tried Profili2, the darn day job keeps me away!

7

Lester, I am almost done doing a documentation article on building using shaped foam in conjunction with a French builder.

I have been eyeing the sail making series of posts and have thought about consolidating into an article or two for the AMYA publication. There are a lot of AMYA members who DON’T visit this forum and probably would like to know about this process. As we found out here, it was a well received topic that caught a lot of attention. I will probably work directly with Claudio to obtain higher resolution photos for printed publication - but thought I would check to see if you might already be thinking - or working - on a similar effort for your web pages of information?

Anything in the works at your end? I hate to duplicate if there is something there and copyright agreements can be agreed upon.

Dick

8

Hi Dick

Nothing at my end! It would be great to see the method more widely known, and an article or two in the AMYA magazine sounds very welcome. If you thought it helpful, I’d be very happy to contribute towards the theory behind the gadget and perhaps contribute the odd equation or graph…

9

Both sails made with the gadget enhanced as described by my contributions to that thread.

The jib above is the 5th sail I’ve built using the gadget. The mainsail was the third.

Dick - at some stage over December/January I will be using the gadget to make some new IOM sails and might even make a few Marblehead sails. If you can wait, I’ll be happy to contribute photos.

10

thanks don and muzza
it makes me glad that we pass along information that people use. and not just read. muzza. those sails look great:zbeer: were they hard to make?
cougar

11

Hi Murray

The sails look very professional, smoothly shaped! Did you say that you now feel you can reliably reproduce a required shape? If so, can you tell us how the resulting shape matches against the graph that Claudio gave about the size of the wedges needed to produce the desired draft? (For example, on a chord of 260 mm, Claudio’s graph says a total wedge thickness of 1.7 mm should yield 9% draft…)

12

Hi - I’ll be happy to take you up on your kind offer - as well as you, Lester. For publication, we need at least 300 dpi resolution if digital. If 35 mm - 3x5 size prints are usable. Which ever meets what you have access to.

Thanks for the kind offer. I will be in touch. Assume, Muzz that you are looking after the holidays?

13

The EC12 guys have a whole book that describes model sail making. The book teaches you to use blocks which are a lot of trouble to make. But it also addresses such things as luff allowances, draft distribution, joining methods, material selection, and more. I believe you can get the book from the EC12 class secretary. The price is quite modest.