Furled sails, to fit or not to fit ?

[Mike Reader]

    Whilst still wading through the standing rigging on my Norske Love rebuild, my thoughts are on the next stage. my initial thoughts were no sails, however as the previous owner/builder has cut out stitched and assembled all of the sails onto the spars, and left them ready to fit loose in the box, it seems a shame to cut them off, so now I have to decide to either fit the full set of sails or perhaps attempt to furl them.

    I have been looking at various builds and I see that often only the main sails are furled, so my question is should I just furl the main sails on the spars and leave off the rest ie jib sails ect, or attempt to furl all of them. I am thinking that the weight on the standing rigging could make them sag and give a lot of extra problems. What is the general opinion to furl or not to furl that is the question ? 

[Charlie pal]

HI Mike.....have only built 5 vessels. Four of them without sails.

On one , I flaked the mainsail atop the boom and ,secured it with lashing. On a 15," version ,of America's cup racer, I hoisted all sail and was able to raise/lower them via Halyards

,....basically the choice is yours.

Good Luck....Charlie

[allanyed]

Mike

How do the sails look?  If the scale is 1:75 or 1:98   it is nigh impossible to make cloth stitched sails to scale.   As has been brought up in a number of recent posts, at scales from about 1:48 and smaller, cloth stitched sails are way out of scale and ruin what may be an otherwise beautiful model.   If you could post some photos with some closeups, I am sure you will get a number of opinions and suggestions on alternative solutions.

 

[PietFriet]

Even when furled you will likely have to cut the sails as the material will be too thick to look representative when rolled up. I prefer furled sails as the happy medium between no sails (bare) and full sails (distracting), but it is a personal view that I got from looking at pictures from completed models.

[Mike Reader]

On 4/12/2021 at 11:56 AM, allanyed said:

Mike

How do the sails look?  If the scale is 1:75 or 1:98   it is nigh impossible to make cloth stitched sails to scale.   As has been brought up in a number of recent posts, at scales from about 1:48 and smaller, cloth stitched sails are way out of scale and ruin what may be an otherwise beautiful model.   If you could post some photos with some closeups, I am sure you will get a number of opinions and suggestions on alternative solutions.

 

Hi allenyed, sorry for delay in replying, got involved with diy jobs around house, garden and garage. Anyway I have posted a picture  of the sails for the main mast, as you suggested and I am sure you are going to say that they are out of scale. I am still leaning toward not fitting sails which will mean removing them from the spars. I have read the very good article by grbsolutions (on his cutter sherbourne)  about furling them and it does seem rather complicated.   

Edited April 20, 2021 by Mike Reader

[Roger Pellett]

I personally do not like to criticize others work on this forum.  Everyone is trying to do their best.  In this case, you have asked for opinions, guidance, so here is mine.

 

Your sails are neatly made.

 

The cloth that your sails are made from is overscale.  At any reasonable modeling scale in scale sail cloth would be at most, a few thousands of an inch thick.  Furling these sails will emphasize the over scale appearance as you will wind up with a fat lumpy roll.

 

For real sails, the stitches viewed at a “scale distance”  joining the panels together would be invisible.  The seam between the panels would be a continuous faint line.  

 

If if you do want to show the model with furled sails, use a much thinner material that will produce a tight seaman like roll.  I would suggest silkspan.

 

Roger

 

 

[Landlubber Mike]

1 hour ago, Roger Pellett said:

 

If if you do want to show the model with furled sails, use a much thinner material that will produce a tight seaman like roll.  I would suggest silkspan.

 

Roger

 

 

 

Or reduce the amount of material used - don't try to furl a full sail, but cut the sail to 1/3 to 1/2 the size and furl that instead.  I had a tutorial somewhere on here where I showed my technique.

 

Otherwise, I think your sails look great!  To me, these are sailing ships and if you want to show them with sails, go for it!  I did furled sails on my Badger, but will go for full sails (or a mixture of furled and full) on my next builds.  Personally, I think sails bring these beauties to life.