Some silkspan tips

[druxey]

I rule on one side only with a thicker paint mix, but suppose that you could do both sides if you wished.

[Louie da fly]

This discussion is such a worthwhile resource! So  many good ideas!

 

I have (of course) bookmarked it.

 

Steven

[Jim Lad]

Me too, Steven. I'm thinking of using silkspan for the sails on the 'Duchess'.

 

John

[Bryan Woods]

Has anyone ever used artist tea bag paper for sails?  Is it similar to silk span? Thanks:-)

[wefalck]

What are 'artists' tea bags? 

 

Some teas are sold in a kind screen-printing fabric-bags. Screen-printing fabrics come an a wide variety of thread thicknesses and 'meshes' and can be easily obtain via the usual routes, e.g. ebay et al.

 

I have used this kind of fabric sources from tea-bags to simulate metal grilles in small scale (1/160). It was easier to work with than the comparable metal fabrics used in sieves.

[Jsk]

Artist Tea paper is different than that used in most tea bags these days. My understanding is that in the 1940s and 1950s model airplane builders discovered that they could apply dope to Japanese paper to cover the wings to form strong, light weight flying surfaces. I believe (and might very well be wrong) that Silkspan is the marketing name for the same product which is also marketed as Artist Tea Paper. 

 

I looked at using the paper a couple months ago but haven't gotten around to experimenting yet.

 

https://www.amazon.com/MLNSUNNY-16-5x16-5White-Handmade-Cyanotype-Printmaking/dp/B0CPBS86JD/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=3M42YJI7Z66Y5&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DKLHlpK7Zl0af8yNdie4c436zuW9pn4WnYwe9KJtlj2iQoYShOqOSby2rSazJC9tzBuU0jrfDbXkUBuxLNSqkQWrb4cjLB59GvJyQJFoP2aSdINjdk3EonxYfI-i1A_G5eo3Jg8FjlYvAr1GehyNdXObnPcMw6KX9UOp8VjjQUaHski-NIeSnILM2T5tKaEfwOGwvIwpNfZofTkz7BogtK7-Xw8hQb7rLLeECmwD6B6wHw5TwV4Tkiyb_Zi9blQaxitAKHSAsj7gdUq_WlzWIb5q0i2h4Lvv6knYiMBSK4s.LsQL2qESpRguKigNzd6ZfAQMzKvlhiYSt6-cNKhYmoM&dib_tag=se&keywords=artist+tea+bag+paper&qid=1725009701&sprefix=Artist+tea%2Caps%2C1326&sr=8-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

 

 

 

[wefalck]

Ah, I understand now. This is tea-bag paper sold in sheets for use by artists. This paper is obviously not disintegrating quickly when wet, which has advantages in our case. 

 

Perhaps we should stop using the term 'silkspan' because it refers to different materials in different countries and originally was a marketing term. 

 

The best way to talk about such materials would be to refer to their weight per sqm or sqft, to the kind of raw-material used, and whether it is a fabric (i.e. woven) or paper (i.e. more or less short fibres arranged in an irregular fashion).

 

The lightest and, hence, thinnest paper I was able to source in France comes from Japan and weighs 8 g/sqm.

 

[Bryan Woods]

This is what I got from Amazon and used to make the sails for Captain John Smith’s shallop. It was pretty durable. I did have some wrinkles in it . That just gives me plenty of room for improvement.

 

Edited August 30, 2024 by Bryan Woods

[wmherbert]

I, as a fan of sails on models (at least on the ships I've been building) do encourage everyone to give it a try.  I think silkspan or what ever we want to call it, ends up more in scale than cloth.  But to each his own. 

       I was quite undecided about doing the sails the first time. Models with just rigging look great and I was worried about screwing it up. I think unless something is done well it's better just leaving it off. But my first attempt turned out well. Ditto for the next model. Went back and forth whether to add the sails and then was very happy I did. 

Now I attach sails to masts. Hoops. And boom and gaff with the masts off the model.  Top sails too if they have hoops. After masts installed I add the jobs and top sails.

   This made doing the sails much easier for me.

      As you can guess I've been making usually schooners with simple rigging. On a ship with furled sails I think I would try to do those as well off the model.  And as far as tall ships with square sails those are beyond my skill level and I'm not sure whether sails add or detract.

At any rate try some sails . You can always remove them if you are unhappy

Bill

[wmherbert]

For two reasons I've been trying different sail techniques.

First. I'm retired

and second. I'm waiting for some Syren line to arrive so I can finish my Flying fish model.

  So with nothing else to do I tried a couple of sails with various methods.

I took painted silkspan and cut a bunch of 1/2 inch strips . I used a cutter of my wive's from her school teaching days. Works well to cut both the wide and narrow strips. I then used glue stick to coat the overlap edge.  And then lapped them to make the sail. I used glue stick to glue the edges and also the reefing line on the sail.  The glue stick comes out purple and was easy to coat the overlap edge. I found I needed to make sure I had a nice uniform coating.  Any extra glue just disappeared as it dries. Doesn't leave any noticeable residue.

I tried first just the one layer of strips. No middle sheet or strips on the back side. Only thing I noticed was if lit from behind the seams were pretty dark and noticeable. 

     So then I tried adding a middle sheet of un painted silkspan and then then back side strips. I did this because if light was coming from behind the sail I thought the overlaps seemed too dark. With light from the front it looked fine. 

So I'm a little uncertain about which way I would go. But I did learn that the glue stick worked fine.  It's still a little bit of a toss up to me whether this method is better than the pencil lines. The pencil lines look good with light from either side.  So maybe what you like best would  just depend on how the model is displayed.

Bill

[druxey]

Actual sail seams do look darker against the light. The seams need to be of scale width and even along their length - not easy at small size. That is why I used a ruling pen instead of piecing the sail together,

[GGibson]

1 hour ago, druxey said:

Actual sail seams do look darker against the light. The seams need to be of scale width and even along their length - not easy at small size. That is why I used a ruling pen instead of piecing the sail together,

 

After druxey's mention of a "ruling pen" to assist with sail seams, I had to do a bit of homework on this little tool, since as a relative newbie in all of this, I was unfamiliar.

 

Found this website which seems to do a pretty good job of describing.  I'm bookmarking and going to get an education...  

 

Quick Guide: How to use a Ruling Pen — Jeea Mirza 

[Louie da fly]

Ghastly things. I learnt drafting using these and I have nightmare memories of a huge black blob of ink dropping onto an all-but-completed drawing . . . aargh!

 

But maybe that's just me . . .

 

Steven

[thibaultron]

Thankfully, in the 4 years of drafting I took (3 in middle school, one in college), I never had to do any of the drawings in ink!

[wefalck]

A sort of transition solution between the ruling pen and the modern Rotring etc. lining pens was something that is called a 'funnel pen' (not sure my translation from German 'Trichterfeder' is correct). This is essentially  a tiny funnel with a capillary at the end of defined diameter (to conform with the standardised line widths in technical drawings). A thin wire runs in the capillary to regulate flow and keep it clean. 

 

They are still used in porcelain-decoration for applying gold suspensions. I inherited a couple from my mother's hobby kit and have one or two antique ones I think.

 

The problem is that they may clog up quickly when used with paints, as they are meant of use with inks.

 

In principle they are easier to use then the old-style ruling pens.

[SardonicMeow]

I have been thinking for a while about how to make sails for my Sultana.  I want them to look good, of course, but also I want sails that appear full of air.  Sails that hang straight down on a schooner just look sad.

 

I purchased some of the material sold as artist teabag paper and have been experimenting with it.  On my model, at 1:64 scale, the sail seams would need to be less than half a millimeter wide, with panels 7mm wide.  Overlapping the teabag paper to achieve this would be nearly impossible.  For such narrow seams, one would typically represent them with lines scribed by a pencil. But in this thread, there was mention of using wire to allow the sails to hold shape.  And that got me thinking.  What if there were a solution, a crazy solution, that takes care of everything?

 

Below is what I came up with, after a few iterations of testing my ideas.  First, the design in Autodesk Fusion.

Teabag paper is taped tightly around a piece...

...that fits into the contraption.

Then 34 gauge wire is threaded from one end to the other.

Glue is spread and a second piece of teabag paper is placed over the first.  To do this, I tried both a glue stick, and brushing on white glue.  The picture below shows brushed on glue.  As you can see, there are some inconsistencies in coverage, and these show up as blotches in the final product (though they aren't as prominent once the glue is dry).  With the glue stick, there were fewer blotches, but because the glue stick couldn't fit into the edges, there was glue absent around the border.  This allowed some wires to shift inside.

Here I start to make the sail, using a pattern printed on office paper.  The lines show up fairly well through the two layers of teabag paper.  In this picture, by the way, is material from a trial using the glue stick.  You can see how wires near the edges have shifted, reducing the usable area.

Carefully cut strips of teabag paper are glued on for the reef bands and edge reinforcement.

Cringles and an extra wire at the foot of the sail are glued on and covered with teabag paper strips.

Once all the gluing is complete, the sail is cut out.

It's not too bad.  All the wires do allow some shaping of the sail.  This picture doesn't show it very well, but there is some decent curvature of the sail, particularly along the edge at the stay.

Anyway, I hope you found this interesting.

 

[thibaultron]

Perhaps you can spray on the glue. Dilute it (white Glue) about 1 to 1, and spray it on with a spray bottle. You can buy the spray bottles at craft and building supply stores.