Trajta by mikiek - FINISHED - Marisstella

[mikiek]

So Zoran - do you make the first fold and sew that, then the second fold and sew that? Or is it fold, fold and then sew?

 

Also on the sail, I don't know if there is another name - I call them tell-tales. The ropes lined up diagonally through the middle of the sail and hanging down. Is that a single rope that you pull through the sail so it hangs down on each side? Or two different ropes - one on each side?

 

And did you tell me you do the sewing by hand?

Edited March 4, 2018 by mikiek

[MarisStella.hr]

It is fold , fold, and then sew...

Those ropes are called 'nettles' ... each of them is a single rope going through the sail ... There are two ways of setting them ... here are the pictures:

[mikiek]

That helped a lot. Thank you Zoran. That gives me something more to do on the sail. I'll see if I can whip the ends of the ropes

 

I'm curious where your illustrations came from? The style reminds me of drawings in Darcy Lever's book Young Sea Officers Sheet Anchor - one of the best around for square riggers.

[mikiek]

The bad news is - the embroidery shop I thought might do the hemming for the sail does stuff like logos on shirts, etc. I was thinking more like needlepoint. They won't touch the sail. One very good idea came out of our discussion. Rather than trying to keep the wire inside the folded hem as you sew, they said sew first. Leave an opening at the end so you can slide the wire into the completed hem. That made sense and was enough to make me try it myself. The catch - you really have to sew the hem, adhesives won't work.

 

So I'm off doing that. It's painfully slow, I was at it for about 10 minutes and did about 2". I don't seem to be able to go much longer without a break, or I start seeing double.

 

I'm using a course all linen white thread. On the next side, I may go thinner so it's not as visible. I'm beginning to think the sail is going to need a splotchy dye job. As pretty as it is, it's a little too sterile for my liking. The white thread should pick up the dye and hopefully blend in better.

 

No pix yet......

[mikiek]

Painfully slow but persistence wins out. Took all evening and a bit of last nite to get the long hem of the triangle shaped sail stitched up. At this rate it will be the weekend before I'll be done. This was a good starter exercise as there is no wire for this side Next step will be adding some grommet looking holes on the hem. The ropes that hold the sail to the mast use these.

 

I've learned a few things already.

 

1. Keep pushing the the folded over material up so the overall hem width doesn't get any wider.

2. Keep the stitches small. No more than 2mm.

3. When stitching the hem for the 2 edges that do have wire in them, feed that wire into the hem after each 10-12 stiches. It's a lot easier to work with.

4. When feeding the wire to the hem put a couple of small pieces of tape on the end to cover the tip of the wire so that it doesn't catch inside the hem.

5. Iron the heck (with starch or sizing) out of the hem before sewing. More than anything, this made the stitching easier. The crease made by ironing held the entire time I was sewing.

6. I'll use a smaller needle and thread on the rest of the edges.

 

I do have a couple of photos this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Don Quixote]

Looks pretty good to me, mate!

 

When the time comes, I have a wife that I spent over a grand on a sewing machine that known how to use every function. Had to take classes.

 

Look at all those typo's! This texting while driving is not easy.

Edited March 11, 2018 by JustBlowingInTheWind
Typo's

[mikiek]

I need to learn some machine basics myself.  Probably would have taken less than 5 minutes for something that took me about 4 hours.

[mitbok]

Hi mikiek,

 

Seems you doing a pretty good job on the sail. If anything, I have a guy who does model sails (making me a set now for sandbagger).

He is very good but not cheap.

[mikiek]

mitbok - just curious, what is this guys profession?

 

You know I guess it would be different if I had to make the sail from scratch. The Marisstella sail already had a fair amount of stitching in it. Even the edges - where I am putting the hems - have stitching already. They are kind of like the marking where you fold the material.

[mitbok]

I did not realize that Marisstella  gave you prestitched sail. By the way, very good Idea with wire on the sail edges.

Done this once so far and it worked perfectly, was able to shape the sail how I wanted.

I never asked him about what he does for a living, may be I should. Some top notch Russian ship model makers ordered from him and gave good reviews

so I decided to bight the bullet as well.  He makes the sails almost like real ones, stitching everything with the machine and by hand.

Here is his own  model with some of the first sails he made : https://fotki.yandex.ru/users/aq5/album/337779/

[mikiek]

That is beautiful work! Do you have to supply the sail plans?

 

The wire trick I learned restoring a 70 year old build. It was in the old sails. However Marisstella does it as well - it's in their manual. I would definitely use it for any build with sails. You can really add some action to the sails.

[mikiek]

I'm quickly gaining respect for the seamstress/tailor occupation.  No patience for the repetition involved with hand sewing. But, still I persevere.

 

I was able to finish hemming the second edge tonite. One more to go. This one came out better than the first so I must be learning. This is the first hem to have a wire in it. As mentioned previously, rather than trying to stitch the hem with the wire in it, I just did the sewing and slid the wire in when I was done. Much simpler! After close inspection of the hem, I won't quit the day job but it could have been a lot worse.

 

I also added some grommet looking holes to the first edge - the edge that fastens to the yard. I picked up this idea from the restore I did, someone passed it on to me. As you will see it doesn't look great from 6" away but from distance it's not bad. This was done by drilling holes (yup drilling) at the appropriate places. Then a mixture of dye (season to taste)  water/white glue at 25%/75% is applied by dipping the tip of a toothpick in the mixture, then sticking the tip into one of the holes. Not too much on the toothpick as the liquid will soak in and spread. The result is a nice brown spot that looks sort of like a grommet or just reinforcement stitching at the hole.  The glue dries and keeps the hole spread open.

 

One pic shows what you can do with the wire in a sail. No plans on leaving it like that but I think you can see the possibilities.

 

Now that I have the routine down I'll take a few pix as I'm doing the last edge. Maybe it will help someone.

 

Lastly, I've mentioned dying the sail - a little darker. I want the sail to look a little dirtier and hoped my white stitching would pick up the color and blend in better. No such luck. I put a few stitches in some scrap and dyed that. If anything the stitching sticks out more now. The dye didn't take very evenly in the sail either. Different materials taking up different amounts of dye. I'll have to think on that a little more.

 

Here's what I have:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mikiek]

I finished the 3rd edge of the sail last night.   Was admiring my work and looking at what was next, then I saw it. The bolt rope.   Last time I did one of those I glued it to the sail edge. I could quickly see that wasn't going to work this time. More on that in a while, but first a few notes on stitching a sail edge. None of it is complicated and I doubt if what I show here is anything revolutionary. But it might have helped me, so maybe it can help someone else.

 

As I've said before, Marisstella did a nice job for a out of the box sail. The interior and edge stitching is there, the builder has only to hem the edge. So first the edge is trimmed with sewing shears down to the outer most stitch.

 

One note - the pix below are not all from the same hem edge. They are a compilation of shots as I was sewing all the edges so don't let that confuse you.

 

 

Then you begin to fold and form the hem. Keep in mind we will be sliding a piece of 0,75mm wire inside the hem after the stitching is done. The wire will allow you to easily add a lot of shape to your sail. I have not seen another sail technique that makes shaping as easy and realistic as the wire does.

 

 

Get an iron nice & hot. It will also REALLY help if you use some spray sizing or starch. On an ironing board or a towel on a hard surface, make the first fold again and begin to iron it. I found the easiest way is to let my left hand working on folding and holding it down while the right hand is ironing a few inches behind. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION the hem has a tendancy to want to widen. I was shooting for a hem width of 3/16".

 

 

 

Continue from one corner to the other. When complete spray some sizing along the folded edge and iron again NOTE: While sizing is a big help be careful with it. If you spray too much (as in saturate the material) and then iron it, it can burn. Leaving an indelible brown spot on your sail. So do 2 passes with a light spray each time. When finished with the first fold, begin the second fold and repeat the process.

 

 

Time to start sewing. I used an oversized needle on the first edge - it was too big. Hard to push thru the folded material. The second edge I used a slightly oversized needle. Much better. I used the same size linen thread for all.

 

 

 

For a lot of sewing you run the thread thru the needle eye, then back down to the other end and tie off both ends. So as you stitch you are running 2 threads thru the material. I felt this was not necessary for my purposes, so I threaded the needle then tied off the end at the needle. So I'm only passing 1 thread thru the material.

 

 

Tie a granny knot in the bitter end of the thread. Starting at one end of the edge (the right hand edge is better for righties) run the needle starting inside the hem to the outside and pull the thread all the way to the granny knot. There's your anchor.

 

 

From there, begin your stitching towards the other end - only a few hundred more to go Work on keeping each stitch in line with the previous. Leave enough free space in the hem to slide your wire in. Keep the size of your stitch to about 1mm. The smaller the better. The bigger the more visible the stitch is. Your thread should start out at least twice as long as the hem you are sewing.

 

 

 

Keep stitching all the way to the edge at the other side. Occasionally, stop and try to slide your wire into the hem to make sure you have left clearance. Better to find out early on if there is a problem. When you get to the end put in a few extra stitches for reinforcement. Terminate the sewing by barely running the needle thru a few threads on the top layer of material. Before you pull it tight run the needle thru the loop. Repeat that at least one more time.

 

Slide your wire into the hem and all the way across. There are several ways to terminate the wire. You can pull it back out about 1", cut it and slide it back in. It will not be visible this way. Others cut the wire long enough to extend out of the hem and become the tie down at the sail corner and let it extend to a belay pin. You can add amazing action to a sail using option 2 as the wire can hold a sail out and extended where a rope will not. You must paint the wire rope colored.

 

 

Above shows the corner and also the start of my bolt rope which I think I will show in another post.

 

 

Edited March 10, 2018 by mikiek

[mikiek]

Some hard core sewing today and I've finished the bolt rope. While it could always be better, honestly I'm real happy with it considering it's my first try at this. There are a lot of How-To posts here regarding bolt ropes. They seem to boil down to just a few methods. On the restore I recently finished I actually just glued one on. It was OK but that was a very small boat. Another method has you sew the rope on by repeatedly running the thread thru the rope then the edge of the sail. I believe this is how it is done in real life, however the rope did not hold up well after sticking a needle thru it so I abandoned this. A similar method - and the one I used - is running the thread over the rope and into the sail edge. This worked a lot better.

 

Sewing was very tedious but not overly difficult. Trajta has a big sail making this task seem more intimidating. This is also a "by hand" task. Even if I knew how to use a machine it would not help here.

 

The goal is easy enough - attach a rope around the edge of the sail. Here's some photos. I did my best to keep these in sequential order but the first few were taken while I was still hemming so don't get confused.

 

 

I used a regular needle and fly tying line. The 6/0 line gave a combination of strength and near invisibility. Similar to hemming I did not thread thru the eye and run the end back out to the other end. I just threaded and tied it off at the eye.  Then a big granny knot at the other end.

 

So pick a corner to start with. Lay the rope up against it and put in several anchoring stitches. Be sure to leave about 1" hanging out as extra. You will need this when you have stitched all the way back to this corner. I started out using the kit rope for the bolt rope. As mentioned above it did not hold up very well for me when I was trying to run a needle thru it. I tore that out and tried some Syren 0.35 rope. This did somewhat better but I quickly decided that sewing thru the bolt rope was not necessary. I could have gone back to the kit rope but I already had the Syren out.

 

Getting away from the corner and moving across the edge. I tried to catch just the very edge of the sail with the needle. Sometimes only 4-5 threads. A lot of repitition working to the next corner.

 

The first corner. Things get a little dicey now.

 

I pretty much held the rope in place and stitched around the corner. Then stitched backwards a bit and forward one more time to reinforce the corner. Corners are where the material wants to fray. They are also the "junction" of the hems being folded over so you are sewing thru as many as 6 layers of material.

 

 

Finished up and ready to work down the edge to the next corner.  Back to the grind.

 

A few notes. I kept the stitches about 2mm apart. Less would have been better but also more time consuming. More and the stitch starts to show more. Right before starting the next stitch hold the thread down with a finger so you can see where the last stitch came out and figure where the next one should go.

I don't remember my rope terms but you can see how it is laying here. By working my stitches from left to right the thread lays in the same direction as the strands in the rope. When you pull the thread tight it wants to worm itself into the rope making it almost invisible. Had I stitched right to left the thread would lay across the grain of the rope and would have been a lot more obvious.

 

It would be darned near impossible to start with a piece of the fly line long enough to get all the way around the sail so plan on using 3-4 pieces. Of course that means stopping one and starting another. At the determined stopping point run the needle under a few top threads and begin to pull thru.

 

Run the needle back thru the loop and pull tight. Repeat this a couple of times. Then cut.

 

The second corner is just like the first. Stitch that similarly and continue down to the last corner. Now it gets interesting.

The idea here is the same as the other corners except that you have 2 ropes to stitch.

Wrap both ropes around the corner and just stitch like crazy. Around the corner, out about 1/2", back the opposite way about 1" and then back one last time. Terminate the thread as shown earlier and trim the rope ends.

 

And there you have it!   If I drank I would be after that.

A few close up shots. As usual the camera shows all. Those stitches are not nearly as visible with naked eye.

Hope this helps someone down the road.

[MarisStella.hr]

Bravo Mr. Mike !  You see, it was not so hard to do ... We never ask too much from the modeler  :):)  but it is not too easy as well ... Bravo once again ...

Regards, Zoran

[mikiek]

Thank you Zoran - I appreciate you watching over me on this project.

 

BTW - I was wondering about the nettle illustrations you posted. Where did those come from?

 

Nettles are next and I believe I can duplicate what those illustrations show - whipped at the ends, sewn at the sail. The yard is ready so I can give this bird some wings.

[MarisStella.hr]

I picked it up from the internet, so they are not to print or share actually... I used them to realize the nettles completely years ago ... So they are helpfull at this moment as well ...  :):) we should not take somebody else's pictures, but it was handy at this moment ... I am sure You can make the same ones ...
Regards, Zoran

 

[mikiek]

I understand completely on the reuse.  I was asking because the style of the drawings is very similar to the drawings in Darcy Lever's book Young Sea Officers Sheet Anchor. I tend to hoard books and I was not familiar with the illustrations so I wondered if there was a "new" book out there I needed to buy.

 

No matter. The drawings were excellent and a big help. I'll be working on the nettles tonite.

[mikiek]

Finished out a quick prototype of a nettle in the sail. I managed to get all the features in Zoran's illustrations even the frayed ends below the seizing. One question, I'll throw to @MarisStella.hr  If the boat was out on the water and the sail about half full, how would those nettles be laying? On boats I've sailed with tell-tales on the sail, if the sail is trimmed properly the tell-tales would be almost horizontal and flat against the sail. So what about Trajta?

 

Wow, that's a really bad picture. Sorry!

 

[MarisStella.hr]

Hi Mr. Mike ... are You sure this nettle is the same long as the ones at the drawing ? ... The sail could be shorten by banding the nettles around the yard. The yard with the shorten sail could be put in many positions, but the most common one is to put the yard into the same position as the ful sail is on ... The sail could be furled, so the complete sail is bound to the yard with the nettles. The nettle should be long enough ...

The sail looks great, Bravo !!

Regards, Zoran

 

[mikiek]

Good point Zoran - and that also tells me that nettles serve a completely different purpose than the tell-tales I keep referring to. It sounds like the nettles are used to trim the sail. Tell-tales are used to tell when the sail is trimmed properly and the wind is flowing over the sail surface correctly.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I will re-size the nettles per the plans. I will also search for some photos of the sail being trimmed with the nettles. That might be a cool way to display Trajta.

 

That does make me wonder about the ropes that tie the sail to the yard. The plans show some extra rope that hangs down. Is this used to furl the sail?

[mikiek]

Awh man! The prototype nettle is about 1/4" shorter than the one in the plans. Tempting to leave as is. However looking at a few more pics, there is a reinforcing patch that would have been sewn to the sail. A hole is punched thru the patch and the rope is fed thru. I guess if I'm going to do this right I need to look into making some sort of patch. So I need to remove the prototype after all.

[mikiek]

Reef nettles are done. Per the picture from Zoran, I added the reef patches. Logically, it seemed like these should be there.  I did make the mistake of trying to cut the first few diamond shaped - I thought they would fit in the diagonal seem better. NOT. Shoulda' been squares rotated 45 degrees. I tried to switch, with varying success. For some reason I just couldn't cut good squares. Also per the pix, I stitched the nettles down right at the patch. They were seized near the end and the last little bit was twisted open - the strands making a crows foot. Now we can tie that sail up to the yard of needed.

 

Speaking of yard, that's next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've usually used Elmer's or even CA for gluing sail material. This time I used fabric glue. Makes sense I guess. We'll have to see how it holds up. It seems pretty tough. I glued the patches with it and it was rather difficult trying to push a needle thru the patch. I was also hoping  to trim up the diamond patches in place, but the patch edges didn't want to lift up.

 

I believe this build is getting close to finished. The sail & yard, another couple pieces of running rig, and the oars are what's left.

 

 

[Charter33]

Superb work Mike. Love the detail on the sails. I'm really enjoying following your progress - thank you for sharing it. Must say I'm very impressed by the quality of Maris Stella kits as well.

Keep up the good work.

 

Graham

[mitbok]

Are you going to "paint" the sail with tea?

[mikiek]

Graham  -  thanks for following along. Yes, the sails seem better although I don't have a lot of experience with sails in general. The material is thicker and just seems better. The stitching is excellent.

 

Mitbok - staining or just "dirtying up" would be my first instinct.  However, I've already seen that dye doesn't take consistently and I'm not sure I want to have to deal with that. I am thinking it may be best left alone. If I did anything it might be taking it outside and rubbing some dirt on it. But most likely I will go as is.

Did you get your sails yet?

[mikiek]

@MarisStella.hr or @donrobinson  Hey guys I'm having a tough time with the drawing in the plans for the fastening of the sail to the yard. Both the knot at the end and the ones in the middle. I could use some assistance.

[MarisStella.hr]

Hi Mr. Mike... there are separated ropers for fastening the sail to the yard: each hole on the sail - one rope ... Each rope is fastened around the yard, the knot is on the top of the yard... the ends of the rope fall free down the sail ... The knots are the simple overheand double knots ...

Zoran

 

[mikiek]

Got it Zoran. One thing I noticed is the sail plans and photos in the manual only show the starboard side of the boat. That shows the rope end hanging down on the starboard side of the sail.  From your reply, I should assume that the other end of the rope is hanging down equally on the port side?

[mitbok]

I will be waiting for my sails for a while.

Tea usually does a pretty good job coloring the sails. Uniform and not too dark.