Preparing kit sails

[palmerit]

I’m curious about the different approaches to preparing cloth sails that come with kits. 
 

In the Model Shipways Pram and Smack kits the instructions have you brush on diluted PVA glue. I think the reason is to stiffen the sail. I made the mistake of letting the sails dry on Saran Wrap, which left them with too much of a glossy sheen. 
 

The Midwest Dory kit has you brush on clear enamel or any clear finish such as a lacquer (their instruction), working the finish into the cloth. I’m guessing this is also to stiffen the sail. 
 

The Vanguard Ranger has you dye the sails but has no instructions about applying anything to the sails. 
 

Is there a preferred method? Why one over the  other?

[Thunder]

As yet to install sails on one of my wooden kits i am waiting for an answer with interest

[palmerit]

I suppose under “any clear finish such as a lacquer” that could include shellac. Not sure the relative advantages of diluted PVA, clear enamel, clear lacquer, clear shellac, or leaving them bare. 
 

I’ve seen recommendation of using clear shellac on knots in rigging and to shape rope coils. I suppose it would do the same with sail material. I don’t know if it would be better to use diluted shellac. I suppose I’d dilute with alcohol. 

Edited Sunday at 09:48 PM by palmerit

[robert952]

From various posts and articles, my take is it helps to stiffen and shape the sales, particularly if you want them unfurled and show the sail full of wind.  I also recall reading that you can mix color in with the PVA to put a tint onto the cloth since some material is too white. 

[Kenchington]

It will depend, amongst other things, on what effect you are aiming for.

 

If I was going to build full-size Norwegian prams for sale and wanted a model that I could display at boat shows and the like, I think the Model Shipways approach would go well. The sail comes out as a flat, rigid board but that would still show off the advertised product.

 

On the other hand, if I wanted a diorama of the Muscongus Bay sloop, with her owner/skipper hauling his lobster traps, I would want the sails either curved and full of wind or else shivering and shaking, as the sloop rounded up into the wind and shot alongside the buoy marking the next trap. Soaking cloth in diluted PVA wouldn't work for that.

 

One day, I hope to build a Vanguard Erycina, with her trawl on the rail and her other fishing gear on deck. If that became a diorama, maybe I would have her at anchor, waiting on a wind, with sails furled. They would certainly need to be dyed, to simulate dressing of the canvas, but maybe that would be the only treatment required.

 

 

As for Ranger (and with all respect for Chris Watton and his magnificent kits), I would question whether her sails should be dyed at all. Robert Hewitt (head of the company by the end of Ranger's career) wasn't just a fishing boat owner. He was a noted racing yachtsman, a one-time Commodore of the Prince of Wales' Yacht Club and later Rear-Commodore of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, while the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) was Commodore. When (in 1864) Hewitt re-structured his company (what would now be almost a reverse-takeover), to raise enough capital to build steam cutters, he had sufficient connections in the right places to persuade Lord Alfred Paget to be Chairman of the new company. Besides being another member of the Royal Thames, Paget was a Member of Parliament, an officer in the Horse Guards and Queen Victoria’s Chief Equerry – as well as a son of the late Marquess of Anglesey, commander of the Allied cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo. Another of the Directors was Rear Admiral George Wellesley, soon to be appointed Admiral Superintendant of Portsmouth Dockyard and later First Naval Lord. Wellesley was a nephew of the late Duke of Wellington, the victor at Waterloo and briefly Prime Minister.

 

When Hewitt's cutters proudly sailed up the River to Billingsgate Market, with fresh fish from his fleet out in the North Sea, all packed in ice (an innovation his father had brought in around 1850 -- then a first for European fisheries), those vessels were mobile advertisements for the family company and the men who led it -- led it to familiarity with the highest in the land. So I suspect, though I cannot prove, that the cutters sported "classy" white sails, distinguishing them from the spritsail barges and other such lesser craft that crowded the River, there being an unspoken but potent social hierarchy in such things. Indeed, as America had introduced English yachtsmen to the advantages of cotton canvas in back 1851, I'd not be surprised if, by the end of her time as a cutter working with the Short Blue fleet, Ranger's sails were bright white, rather than the creamy tone of conventional flax & hemp sailcloth.

 

 

Trevor

[palmerit]

I’ve seen some that suggest starching the sails. Some suggest putting a lacquer on after they’re starched. 

[Dr PR]

Whatever you do, test it first on a scrap piece of cloth!

[wefalck]

Perhaps, rather than asking how 'should' I prepare sails, a better question to ask is 'what kind of effect do I envisage to achieve' and then think what would need to be done to achieve it, such as stiffening, change in colour, hiding a too course weave, etc. Then try out various materials at your disposal or that you can obtain.

 

Perhaps a fundamental question to ask is also, whether the kit-supplied fabric is really suitable. For all but the largest scales the fabric usually supplied is too thick and has a too coarse weave.

 

Perhaps you also want to look through the several threads here on this forum related to 'silk-span', where there is a quite extensive discussion and references to more realistic and to-scale sails.