Has anyone ever made a sail

[AtlanticAl]

My wife has several sewing machines. The one she uses most cost her 3500, (they are her toys, and i dont care what she pays for them, she dosent care what i paid for two paslode nail guns) What i wonder is, could that machine be used to make a sail. I have a 130 percent genoa on my boat, and would like a working main, which would make the boat, easier to single hand, could i make that on a normal sewing machine, what i think is, if i did it by rolling up the material and making it in two halves, then really roling up one half, to pass it through the machine, i could sew the two halves together. Sewing the edges would be easy, she thinks it could be done, provided, i helped her force the sail through the space between the needle and the rest of the machine, has anyone ever done it, or does a sail have to be made on some sort of special machine, its a 28 foot boat, with a thirty foot mast. I dont mean making the whole sail in two halves, i mean making the two halfs sepperatly, then sewing them together. I would make the sail, panel by panel, but in two halfs.
Anyone got any info, of what they have done.

 

[Joe]

Go here for information on making your own sails and canvas gear: www.sailrite.com

 

[dparilla]

If the machine can handle a number 20 needle it could sew the fabric. That said, I would recommend a walking foot machine to sew the length and thickness that you will need for sail making. If she can use her machine for upholstery or denim without it bogging, it should handle dacron. I use a sailrite lsz-1 for all my canvas work, so I can vouch for it as a baseline. Compare the specs to make sure it is up to the task, I would hate to ruin the timing on a machine designed for fine work by force feeding it 6 layers of Dacron.

 

[Ron20324]

If you make the sail panel by panel, you only have to feed the panel width under the arm, nothalf of the sail. I too have the Sailrite machine. With Xmas coming it would be a swell gift that the whole family could enjoy. :dance:

 

[sandpiper10471]

It is not sewing the panels together that will be the problem for a domestic machine. It will be the corner reinforcements. Then if there is any UV cover, as in the clew of a furling main, the challenge increases. Furthermore, I am assuming the machine does zigzag. Info on the machine would be useful. Price means very little in terms of designed purpose.

 

[Ross]

Machine stitch what you can and hand sew the rest. That is the way it has been done for years. The "Sail Makers Apprentice" in a fine book that covers the details for an effort of this sort.

 

[RichH]

You should consider to do some actual trials on actual material before making a commitment to build a sail with any 'non-industrial' sewing machine.

"Dress makers" machines often have difficulty in 'penetrating' multiple layers of material (not enough mass in the 'wheel' to affect the proper 'inertia' to 'punch' the needle through heavy materials); have difficulty in 'needle withdrawal' due to the friction of the 'withdrawal' -- if the 'presser foot' doesnt have sufficient 'spring tension' force, the presser foot wont keep the material flat to the machine 'anvil' and the fabric will 'lift' when the needle is withdrawn and you will get a lot of 'skipped stitches'.

As another poster listed ... check out the sailrite site for 'hints' when using a 'home-type' sewing machine.

You really dont need zig-zag stitches for sail construction, many sails and canvas projects made on 'home' machines are suitable with 'straight' stitching.

 

[Bill Roosa]

I've done it, Ross and RichH pretty much nailed it. The corners where all hand sewn as my domestic machine could not handle the number of layers.
The long stiches in the sail center where very easy and this saves a lot of time (I did another sail entirely by hand (a dingy) and it was quite teidous).
There is also the "holes in the sail" to address. this is "by hand only" work as no machine is able to stich those. Now if you have a hydrolic press........ you have some additional options for the holes. Not very salty options IMHO though.

 

[Ross]

My experience with sail cloth is that it is harder to sew than most other fabrics because of the resin treatments. the weave is very difficult to distort so that the needle can penetrate. Cotton canvas is easy to hand sew with a palm and needle but 9 ounce sail cloth almost calls for driving the needle with a mallet for each stitch.

 

[RichH]

After lofting my own sails for well close to 40 years .... entirely forget about 'hand-stitching'. Even with 'automatic' hand sewing awls you will almost never get the proper and consistent proper stitch tension in 'hard' cloth that will not pucker and distort the seam/panel shape. Hand stitching is a true art-form and takes many many years to 'arrive' at a consistent and equally tensioned stitch.

 

[arf145]

No Way

...would I use my wife's nice Bernina or whatever to work on sails. I would guess that you'd own any problems that occurred afterward Having said that, I have used my wife's old Singer Touch n Sew to make backpacks, tents and other gear--of course, that wasn't a cherished toy of hers. It worked with heavy coated nylon pack cloth and Cordura just fine.

I don't make sails, but I have worked with Sunbrella for boat canvas projects. For that, I got an old Husqvarna Viking off of Ebay--it has a handy low gear to help punch the needle through the multi-layer corners. Oddly enough, I think the old Singer with it's mostly metal gears is heavier duty than the Husqvarna with its many plastic ones.

If you're going to tackle a sail project, I suggest you get your own machine to do it.

 

[AtlanticAl]

Lots of good advice, the sewing machine (her main one) is a Janome memory craft 1001 She also has a sewing machine that sews leather, i used that one to make a holster, for a cowboy gun, and it was pretty thick leather i was sewing, it did it no problem, almost as if the leather wasnt there. She has lots of sewing machines, the one she uses most of the time, (the expensive one) sews multiple layers, and while i dont think it could sew leather, it certainly could sew denim, or any other normal fibre.

I dont understand what Ron 20234 is saying, that you only have to pass the pane through the machine, as the way i see it, you cant sew just the panels, and have two sides of the sails hanging out of the machine, you have to stich the panels flat, which is why i said, stich two halves of the sails, then stich them together.

 

[Ross]

Al, consider that you have several strips of fabric to sew together into a single piece. The first two are easy one panel on each side of the needle. For the next panel you have two panel to the left of the needle and one to the right under the arm. with the next panel you will have three panels to the left and then four and then five etc. with each new panel only one goes under the arm to the right of the needle. It will help enormously if you have a large outfeed table.

 

[Bill Roosa]

What Ron is saying is start at the bottom panel, sew the next panel on to that, then the next, then the next till you get to the top. No need to build two big panels then fight with getting one through the machine throat.
On a more serious note, how are you going to lay out the sail? Getting everything lined up is important to having all the edges be smooth curved lines. That traditionally takes a horizontal surface that is large enough to lay the entire sail out at once.

 

[Ross]

I know people that have used their church social hall floor.

 

[Sam Salter]

Getting the bulk of the sail under the "arch" of the machine is not the problem - it can be done quite easily with a little thought.
It's the shear bulk of 6 or 7 thicknesses of Dacron in the corners!
My wife has a really expensive Husquvarna (sewing machine, not chainsaw).
I have a Sailrite LSZ-1.
There is no way her machine would sew the sails I sew.
You need a #19 or 20 needle, V92 polyester yarn, a walking foot and a heavy flywheel.
Now the leather machine might do it!
But as someone else said there's more to a sail than sewing bits of Dacron together.
You need space to loft it - a nice big wooden floor that you can stick awls into.
A means to put in all the grommets, but with a 28 footer you could do that by hand with a big mallet and the special dies.
I'm assuming that you'd buy a kit from someone like Sailrite. If you're thinking of doing it from scratch you need to start reading and learning how to "broad seam".

 

[Sam Salter]

As an aside -
When I went with my wife once to her favorite sewing store, a man and his wife came in to buy her a sewing machine. Me and this guy were the only men in a store with maybe 30 women!
The lady said to her husband "Should we buy the Husquvarna or the Berninni?"
He looked at me with a smile an said "well, I'd buy the Husquvarna, they make real good chainsaws!"

 

[AtlanticAl]

Al, consider that you have several strips of fabric to sew together into a single piece. The first two are easy one panel on each side of the needle. For the next panel you have two panel to the left of the needle and one to the right under the arm. with the next panel you will have three panels to the left and then four and then five etc. with each new panel only one goes under the arm to the right of the needle. It will help enormously if you have a large outfeed table.

You have just made me feel really fecking stupid, i never thought of that, and not just me, my wife didnt think of that either, we were somehow thinking, you would have to shove loads of sail, through the arm of the machine, we didnt realise, it would be just one panel, with the rest hanging out, well i didnt realise, she might have, but didnt explain it to me clearly, I dont know what i was thinking, but what you say, is just so obvious. I feel really stupiid.

 

[AtlanticAl]

Getting the bulk of the sail under the "arch" of the machine is not the problem - it can be done quite easily with a little thought.
It's the shear bulk of 6 or 7 thicknesses of Dacron in the corners!
My wife has a really expensive Husquvarna (sewing machine, not chainsaw).
I have a Sailrite LSZ-1.
There is no way her machine would sew the sails I sew.
You need a #19 or 20 needle, V92 polyester yarn, a walking foot and a heavy flywheel.
Now the leather machine might do it!
But as someone else said there's more to a sail than sewing bits of Dacron together.
You need space to loft it - a nice big wooden floor that you can stick awls into.
A means to put in all the grommets, but with a 28 footer you could do that by hand with a big mallet and the special dies.
I'm assuming that you'd buy a kit from someone like Sailrite. If you're thinking of doing it from scratch you need to start reading and learning how to "broad seam".

I have used those grommet kits before, i was in the merchant marine, and used to sew a lot of canvas covers by hand, with a palm, and needle, it was those triangular needles, sailmakers needle. I never made anything more than covers, for things like pilot ladders, deck battery boxes for emergency back up to radioes, emergency deck mounted steering wheels, things on the deck generaly made of wood, that requiered a cover.

I know, you need a big area to do the math, and cut out the panels, and i reckon our garden would be good for that, while it is much better to have a metal or solid floor under you for laying and cutting large areas of material, i think you could do it, on the grass. We could probably also do it in a shop we have, but if we did that we would be limited to doing half at a time, which wouldnt be good. A church hall would be ideal, but not sure what they would think about us, cutting up material on their floors.

 

[Bill Roosa]

AtlanticAl, sometimes it takes genius to see the blindingly obvious. I had this same epiphany on my first sail also BTW.
You can hand sew the holes also but you will be pretty buff afterwards from all the effort.