Hair Spray for Sails and Loose Sail Rigging

[mkmossop]

I didn't find much in a search here, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere a while ago that hair spray works well to puff out sails? I was thinking of trying some on mine later tonight.

 

I have an issue though which I'm not sure the hair spray will fix. The rigging on my sails is loose because of the lack of rigidity in the sails. I'm hoping the stiffening them with the hairspray will help, but I'm not sure. I think the edges of the sails need to be rigid to pull the rigging tight. I guess glue would work, but would probably show.

 

How do people usually fix this? Just leave the rigging loose? I could pull it tight but then the sails would be pulled way way back and would look silly. I worked hard to keep the rest of the rigging (on masts etc) tight since I think it looks much better. Here are a couple pics of the loose sail rigs.

 

 

[toms10]

To keep the bottom corners of the sails in the right position I tensioned the clew lines to curve the bottom corners of the sail to the correct position.  Then I tied up the sheet lines with enough tension to keep the clew line taught. The sail still maintained a realistic curve at the bottom.  To get the whole sail to have a billowing effect, I read that some put a wire inside the side hem of the sail and then bend it accordingly.

Tom

[mkmossop]

Ah damn... should have thought of the wire... too late for that now. I think the hairspray will work to maintain the sail shape, however I don't know how I'll get the rigging taught.

 

Which one is the sheet line? On the main sail I have the clew line, then one line going back and one going forward. They are semi balanced, but couldn't get them all taught at the same time. I would need the sail to be more rigid.

[mkmossop]

So the hairspray worked pretty well... here are a couple pics.

 

 

 

I'm really annoyed I didn't ask about this before... inserting a wire would have solved all this and I would be able to rig the lines tight. I'm considering trying to unfold the bottoms of the sails and add in a wire, but I'll lose it if I mess something up and have to redo them, so I probably won't. Hopefully I can figure something up to get the lines tighter.