Lady Nelson sails?

[Dave_E]

Hi Everyone,

 

I'm new to wooden ship building. Always wanted to, just never did. I built plenty of plastic tall ship kits in my youth where you could include the "plastic" sails or build it with bare yards. In the real world, the only time you'd see a tall ship with naked arms is when all the canvas would be removed for repair or ship layup or something like that, no?

 

Anyway... has anyone added sails to these kits that come with naked spars and yards?

 

Did I get the terminology correct?

 

Dave

[allanyed]

Some folks like to add sails, some don't.  If you look at contemporary ship models, sails are a rarity.  If you decide  you must have sails, research the subject here at MSW thoroughly as there has been a lot of discussion on materials.  Sail material in kits generally is pretty much useless as it is out of scale.  The consensus here is that no woven cloth exists that is to scale for 1:48 or smaller. Silk span and other nonwoven materials is a great substitution.  There are lot of otherwise fantastic models to be found here, both scratch and kit, and many have been utterly ruined with out-of-scale sails.  In addition to the many discussions here at MSW, consider buying the booklet on sail making from Seawatch Books by David Antscherl.  https://www.seawatchbooks.com/ItemDisplay.php?sku=115003 

Good luck.

Allan

[Bob Cleek]

Yes. Some canvas was "sent up" and "sent down" at sea and not left continually bent to spars, but this was generally light air stuff. In port, where it would often take weeks to unload a vessel, or months, if it was necessary to wait for favorable winds, canvas would be sent down and ashore for repairs and/or storage. When I was a kid, the was an old sailmaker and canvas shop on San Francisco's Embarcadero, Simpson and Fisher, that had been around since the sailing ship days. They had a big painted sign on the wall of the building advertising "sail storage."  Ships which anticipated being laid up for a period of time would store their canvas ashore in dry storage where the rodents could be kept at bay more easily than aboard ship. Salty cotton sails were a delicacy to the shipboard rats.

Edited November 23, 2021 by Bob Cleek

[glbarlow]

Most models don’t include sails. For me the reason is simple: this is a model, I don’t want cloth hiding and covering all the detailed work I did on the model and on the rigging. I included every line Pegasus would have, I added some lines to Lady Nelson per my reference book on cutters because the plans are sparse, so far as I know Cheerful includes all her rigging, etc.. I never considered attaching cloth to any of them, why conceal my work.  In this case I do have contemporary models on my side, they don’t include sails, I imagine for the same reason.