rvchima

Trevor, Thank you so much for your help with this question. It seems like I can't go wrong no matter where I position the staysail. I am not a sailor but I do enjoy making models of beautiful ships. I usually rely on a kit with good plans and instructions to get the details right. This is not one of those kits, so your help is greatly appreciated.

Location of Staysail & Gaff Topsail I am behind on posts but ahead on construction, and have run into a question of where to rig the Fisherman's staysail relative to the gaff topsail & foresail. The instructions by Amati below show the staysail between the foresail and the gaff topsail. This is impossible because those two are rigged together with a clew line. Another Amati error. The two following images from Jensen show the staysail rigged inside the gaff topsail & foresail. The two following images from EdKu20 and Model Shipways online show the staysail rigged outside the gaff topsail & foresail. Rigging the staysail outside the other two seems more intuitive. It leaves the staysail free to fill as it wants to without pushing the other sails. But I sure could use some advice on this.

Trevor and Phil, Thank you for the excellent explanations. I suspected that was the case, but with no experience sailing I wasn't sure. Now I understand why many blocks are attached with removable hooks. And why a race on a triangular course would be so difficult.

Rigging Question Jensen's book shows foretopmast and maintopmast backstays, which of course are not shown on the Amati plans. Jensen mentions different locations for securing these backstays when they are or are not setup. When would they be used? They would seriously limit the motion of the fore and main booms. Is that important, or do the booms not have to move that much? I'll admit to complete ignorance on this question.

Mainsail Complete - 110 days, 211 hours I'm trying to include some of the details that Amati left out of this kit. I am using Jenson's book as my main reference. His drawings show details of the rigging but aren't always clear where lines are belayed. I'm pretty much stuck to using belaying pins that are already installed and don't look like they will be needed later. The scale is small enough that I've had to cheat a little. I've used single blocks on many lines that should go through double blocks. Going to need some really strong sailors. Here' the ship with the mainsail installed. In the next photo I've highlighted in red everything that is not included in the Amati kit. Quite a lot actually. And two detail shots.

Hi David, For the reef lines: Punch the holes in the sail first with a fine needle. Attach 1/2" steel rulers to each side of the sail with a spring clamp. Starting near the clamp, sew the thread around a ruler, through the sail, then repeat on the other side. At this point the threads will be too loose to cut the bottoms without glue. Put a drop of dilute Elmer's glue, maybe 40% water, on each hole with a fine brush. Flip the sail and glue the other side. By now the glue is already getting tacky. Lay the sail on the bench, hold the tops of the threads to the ruler with a finger, and cut the bottoms with with a sharp razor. Lift the ruler out when the bottoms are all cut. Straighten the threads while the glue is still tacky enough to hold them in place. Flip the sail over, do the other side, and trim any long threads to length. I experimented a lot on scraps to get this to work.

Better Baggy Wrinkles (BBWs?) The answer was in front of me all along in the rag that I tried to use. Instead of using the roping from the edge I cut strips of the rag itself along the stitch lines. They are nice and fuzzy, the width is perfect, they don't unravel, and they are easily stitched along the lines. Many years ago we had a young Amish woman who cleaned for us. She gave us a huge stack of these rags, and as I recall she bought them in the automotive department at Walmart. Thank you Ada.

Sails Redrawn and Reefing Lines Added I redrew the sails that had incorrect cloth seams, and added reefing lines to the fore and main sails. I made the reefing lines by clamping 1/2" wide stainless rulers to each side of the sail, then stitched some cotton thread side-to-side through the sail and around the rulers. I dabbed some thinned white glue on each hole, then carefully cut the bottom of each stitch with a new blade before the glue dried. I barely had time to clean the glue off my rulers. I then stitched the boom and gaff to the mainsail. I really wanted to attach the mainsail, but as noted in the previous post, there are a lot more things to attach to it first. I plan to attach the main boom lifts, and they are padded with baggy wrinkles (BWs) to prevent the sail from chafing against the lines. There are lots of questions on MSW about how to make BWs, but not a lot of answers. I tried making some by cutting the edge roping off a rag that we had. It was surprisingly hard to thread a needle through the pieces - you may notice some blood on one or two. I wasn't sure if I liked them so I tried a technique recommended by PopJack. Basically he tied some line with a running stitch while including some wool fiber. I used a crochet hook and omitted the wool, but ended up with a similar result. The photo shows the rag with some edging removed, a line with edging used as BWs, and a line with crocheted BWs. The BWs are all loose on the lines and can be re-positioned, trimmed, and glued later. I think I like the rag BWs best.

Jenson's book is showing me so many things the Amati kit omitted that it's making everything a lot harder at the moment. No upper shrouds or ratlines. No upper mast backstays. No halyards. Incomplete rigging for the booms. No boom lifts. I added the upper shrouds and ratlines, which was difficult because of other lines in the way. But I can't decide what else to add and what to just give up on.

Bluenose II, Saga of the Great Fishing Schooner by L. B. Jensen I finally bought a good reference book for the Bluenose, at least Bluenose 2.0. The cover is deceptive - the book measures 11" x 14". It is entirely hand drawn and lettered, and is filled with excellent detailed drawings of the ship. Now I can see what details I've already got wrong. So what's wrong with this picture? If you guessed that the seams between fabric pieces on the jib and jib topsails are much wider than those on the mainsail you are correct. I copied all the seam patterns directly from the plans and never noticed the discrepancy until now. The seams on the mainsail are spaced 1 cm apart, or 39" at full scale - very reasonable for 1920s fabric. The seams on the jib and jib topsails are 13 mm apart, or 51" at full scale - way too big. Would anyone ever notice? Probably not but I'll have to redraw them anyway. Note: you cannot erase pencil marks on silkspan.

Much Better! I built a new mainsail from silkspan using Tom Lauria's technique linked above. Tom does not seem to post on MSW but a quick search on Lauria turned up 6 pages of mentions, mostly about making sails or rope hanks. I had plenty of silkspan from previous model airplane projects. It is strong and does not disintegrate in water - that's why it's also used to make teabags. It is available in three thicknesses from Sig Manufacturing. Tom said his was .0015" thick. Mine is .003" thick - I suspect it's Sig's medium-weight material. My only concern is that silkspan can become brittle and yellow over the years. However, the first step of Tom's process is to coat the silkspan liberally with artists' acrylic paint, and that should help protect the material. I chose an off-white paint called Titan Buff. I think it resembles muslin. I painted two sheets about 18" x 24" and used almost half a tube of paint! The silkspan really soaks it up. The paint goes right through the material, so when the front is done the back is too. I marked the sails with a hard, dark pencil and attached hem reinforcements with diluted Elmer's glue. Tom recommends using a travel iron to seal the strips down, with a sheet of dry wax paper between the sail and the iron. Dry wax paper is NOT the wax paper you have in your kitchen. It is also called deli paper and has the wax embedded in the fibers so it doesn't come off on your sandwich or your sail. Even better, we had some parchment paper which is silicon-based and used for baking in a hot oven. I only needed a 6" strip. I don't have a travel iron - I don't think I've ever ironed clothes while traveling. I do have a covering iron used to attach iron-on covering to larger model airplanes. I set it to 250 degrees and it worked perfectly. The mainsail took a few hours to make and I am pretty happy with it. I still have to stitch it to the boom and gaff, and attach the sail to the rings on the mast. That looks tricky.

Well, That's Not Going to Work After all the sewing, my cloth mainsail is too far out of shape. I think I will try making sails out of silkspan, as described in this YouTube video by Tom Lauria. I actually have plenty of silkspan left over from my model airplane days. Making Sails for Ship Models from Silkspan, Parts 1 & 2

Every Project Deserves a New Tool - Or Does It? I was ready to start sewing sails, so I collected all my tools and materials from my basement workshop and carried everything to my wife's sewing room three flights up in the attic. We have an old Viking-Husqvarna sewing machine that we inherited from my mother-in-law 40 years ago. It used to do fancy stitches using various cams. The cam mechanism jammed years ago but it still did beautiful straight and zig-zag stitches, until earlier this summer when it started to smoke. We took it to a local repair shop where the repairman cleaned it and assured us that it was accumulated dust that was smoking. I set up to sew my mainsail but when I went to wind a bobbin, the bobbin shaft disappeared inside the case. I spent all day disassembling the machine and managed to fix the bobbin shaft. I sewed two seams before the whole machine jammed up. I gave up and ordered a new Brother computerized sewing machine from Amazon. It cost less than what I paid the repairman for the other machine. It doesn't fit inside our old sewing machine cabinet but I think I can make it fit. 45+ year-old Viking-Husqvarna machine. New Brother computerized machine. After a little practice on some scraps I stitched my mainsail. At first the sail matched my plan almost exactly. But after stitching all the scale seams between the individual pieces of fabric, the sail was much shorter than the pattern. (The purple stitch lines are supposed to disappear automatically after a few days.) After stitching a zig-zaged reefing band the sail was also narrower than before. My wife said "Yeah, sewing can take up a lot of fabric." By the way, I really like the computerized Brother machine. My only complaint is that there are a few settings that are made by shutting the machine off, holding a button down, and then turning the machine back on. But when you turn the machine off it resets the stitch pattern, width, and length back to the default. It's easy to get confused and end up with the wrong stitch. That never happened with the mechanical machine. I don't know if I can use the sail or not. I'll have to try it on the ship and see how it looks. Amati was very stingy with their sail cloth and I don't have enough scraps to try over. Fabric is not so easy to find around here since JoAnn Fabrics went out of business. If I can find something appropriate, I could try sewing the fake seams on an extra large piece first, then cutting the sail slightly oversized and hemming the edges to fit the plan. In a private conversation David Lester sent me information about making sails out of silkspan, a strong tissue that I used years ago for covering model airplanes. The seams can be drawn on it with pencil and the hems can be glued down. Maybe I should have listened to him in the first place.

Trevor, Thank you so much for your comments about the alignment of the fabric on a sail. I know more about weaving than I do about sailing, so I really appreciate the help. As soon as I read it made immediate sense. And good catch that the upper part of the "jib" sail has the cloth aligned incorrectly. I am trying to be polite to Amati, but I am not too impressed with this kit. I will experiment with the mitre joint on the two jib sails. I'm mot sure if I can sew it at this small scale but I will see what I can do.

Paper Sails Yesterday I scanned and printed all my sail patterns. It took a little origami to fit each sail in my 8.5 x 11 printer, and I had to print the main sail in two pieces. Today I washed and ironed the cotton fabric that came with the kit, then laid out the sails on it. Two sides of the fabric unravels - that's the weft. The warp goes in the other direction. The seam lines on the sails follow the warp, and I laid out the sails that way. It probably doesn't matter. After reading Gregg's advice above I decided to test fit the paper sails. I'm really glad that I did because 1. Now I know where the sails go. 2. The foremast boom is too long. 3. The foremast staysail pattern is too big. After a couple of quick modifications I'll be ready to start cutting cloth.