The Eagle is in flight

Lance is on his way to pick up five sails that we will be repairing for the USCGC Eagle. The Eagle is a 295' Barque that is used as a training vessel for Coast Guard officers. She carries about 21,000 square feet of sail. We are repairing five of the sails including the forecourse which is one of the largest sails she carries. The others (Tops and Gallants) are actually not too much bigger the largest Susan Constant sails we are currently building. Lance left early this morning to go to New Londoin CT which is a 7-9 hour drive each way. He should be back sometime tomorrow, although I wouldn't be surprised he pulled an up and back trip in one day. We will have the sails on the floor Wednesday. If you are in the area and want to see some interesting sails stop by the loft during the next couple of weeks. I'll post more once we get started on the repairs.

Photo borrowed from Wikipedia

We can now sew small boys!

In a moment of weakness and impulse I purchased a new sewing machine for the loft. I really just wanted to see if our bank had any money to lend, and as it turns out they did. Actually our old "thumper" machine has been great but not quite big enough for some of the larger sails with which we are now working. It was definately undersized for sewing small boys. Jackson was kind enough to pose with the machine, we didn't actually sew him.
The machine is a Cordes Mini/Maxi, made in Australia. It is the same machine used in many of the maxi boat sail lofts around the world. It is slightly overkill for what we generally do but it became very close in price to the much less capable machines we had been shopping. The Australian dollar fell dramatically against the US dollar over the last several months which made the machine about 30% less expensive. Just to see if it would do it I once sewed 1/2" plywood with the old machine. The new one supposedly will sew 1" plywood (and lots of really heavy sails). So what this all means for our customers is that you can now come to us with all of your plywood, small boy, and very large sail sewing needs!

We are back at it

We had to take last week off from square sails to build a couple of laminate race sails, a cruising spinnaker, and a boom furling main. But we have pushed most of that to the side to put in a good chunk of time on the square sails. Lance and Justin are getting more time on the sails than I am, but in between sail sale calls I have been able to sew ropes, install some cringles and re-cut the mizzen bonnet. We are actually in the home stretch on the first three sails. Things are going much more quickly as we have all become competent at roping and the other basics of making these sails.

I got a shot today of Justin in the act of worming, parcelling, and serving a clew and Lance running the computer driven cutting table. It is amazing to see how much sailmaking has changed in the last 400 years! Not only have the processes changed but the basic structural design of sails has changed.

Square sails are essentially a membrane that floats inside a rope frame. The roping around the edges provides much of the structural strength of the sail as well as providing the 3D shape. When sewing the ropes we gather the cloth so that when the sail is hoisted and the edges stretched the cloth is stretched less and takes a shape. Structurally the sail "membrane" is mostly a single layer with a tabling around the edges and a a double layer along the leeches. These reinforced areas primarily provide a transition from the membrane to the edge rope which carries the heavy loads.

In modern sailmaking the membrane of the sail not only carries the loads but also provides the shape though broadseaming and luff curve. The corners of a modern sail are built up with multiple layers of cloth to transition the loads from the corners into the body of the membrane. The leech and foot edges on a modern sail are merely finish details and the luff is reinforced enough to interface the sail with the spars. Shape is imparted on a modern sail membrane by attaching two curved edges(or a curved luff to a straight mast) to create a 3D shape. All of the seams between panels and the luffs of modern sails are shaped this way. the computer has made 3D shape easily repeatable and sails have become very consistent in shape. One of the great things about this classic sailmaking project is watching the shape being created inch by inch by the deliberate use of needle and thread by human hands.

And today was a very good day as the hands in this loft kept all blood on the inside!

You can tell Jerry is working by the trail of blood

Typical boss, "yeah, I bought bandaids for the employees". Just this morning he was describing to us how you can poke a needle through the gripping gloves, and then the blood pools inside the glove. Thanks, Jerry.

Our forearms are getting a good workout, here's a picture of Justin from this afternoon.

Roping

The first thing I had to do today is buy band-aids. For some reason these guys keep poking themselves and I don't want blood all over the sails. Stuart bleeds more than the others each time he breaks open but the other two tend to poke themselves more often so its probably a wash. Anyway the rope dried and the roping got underway today. Since I am paranoid that I have grossly underestimated this project I am scrambling to sell sails and letting the other guys do the heavy lifting today. Lance and Justin did a really nice job roping the sprits'l today and will be continuing work on it and the mizzen bonnet tomorrow. Tomorrow we will get to more places on the sails that will have cringles and splices. It should be fun. Hopefully we can reduce the bleeding tomorrow.



The left hand picture shows the sail and rope strung up together and being sewn together. The one on the right is a close-up of Lance sewing the rope. He is wearing a palm and a glove. The palm is used to push the needle through and the glove provides extra grip for pulling the needle on the backside.

WHAT WE'RE LISTENING TO THIS WEEK AT THE SAIL LOFT

NPR

Black Sabbath

AC/DC

Beastie Boys

Nirvana

90s Alt

80s Hair Metal

Lynrd Skynrd

Democratic National Convention

Employees complaining about the Democratic National Convention

MORE DYEING THE ROPE PICS

Dyeing the Rope

It seems every time there is a dirty job to be done,

I get it.

"Lance, there's a huge stain on this sail", "Lance, the boat ran aground", "Lance, can you help me get rid of this body". It never ends. Jerry (our fearless leader) comes in this morning and says "what do you say we dye some rope". Our concerns of whether we're dressed for this or not were met with the typical "you worry too much"; and within the hour he'd rigged up a system using state of the art equipment for the task.

The process consisted of a 50 gallon drum and a plastic shipping tube left over from an order of battens. The tube was cut down to 6 feet, then filled with the paint/dye mixture and placed inside the 50 gallon drum. One person fed the rope into the tube, another pulled it out the other side while squeeging off the excess, and a third pulled the slack of the rope and laid it out for drying.

The process took about 3 hours and we ended up doing two runs of over 400 feet. It turned out beautiful. Now we're just hoping it doesn't rain before the lines dry as one of our technical advisors sent an email telling us that if it gets wet, it can take days to dry.

Grommets

We spent the day friday sewing grommets. In modern sailmakaing few people sew grommets at all. We use two-part nickel plated brass grommets that are quickly set by first punching a hole and then applying three good strikes to a forming die. Hand sewn grommets are made-up using a round formed piece of line that is sewn to the sail around a punched hole. The liner is made of 1/4" three strand line that is spliced into a circle. The thread is passed alternatly through the hole and then passed over the liner and through the sailcloth in a circle about a half inch larger then the hole. At left is a picture of the top two grommets on the luff of the mizzen.
The grommets are sewn along the head of all of the sails and along the foot of any sail that will use a bonnet. So we are sewing grommets across the head of both the mizzen and the sprits'l and along the foot of the mizzen. On these sails we are sewing two 5/8" grommets per panel. The next step will be to rope the edges. The rope is being made now and is scheduled to be here this week. It will need to be dyed before it is used so it'll probably be another week before we resume work on these sails. In the mean time the crew will be practicing the neccesary splices and knots and catching up on modern sailmaking projects.

We're making sails

Construction is now underway! We have done the first layout on the sprits'l and the mizzen and mizzen bonnet. The sprits'l is the smallest square sail on this boat. It measures 22' by 13' and the layout is quite simple. The mizzen (sometimes called a spanker) and its bonnet are a triangular lug type sail that fly from an angled yard on the aft mast. A bonnet is an extension that is laced to the foot of a sail to increase its area for light air. On this ship both of the courses and the mizzen have bonnets.
The picture at right shows the mizzen and bonnet being layed out together. The bonnet will be cut off after the combined sail is seamed. They will then have tablings cut and sewn along their edges and roped. The tablings are strips of cloth cut from the edge to which they will be applied. The tabling and sail edge are turned under so there are no raw edges and then they are sewn together. Luckily we are able to do all of this initial sewing of seams and tablings with a machine. On modern sail we use seperate strip or tape of dacron to finish the dge rather than using a turned or cut tabling.

Lance and Stuart can be seen walking across the mizzen with a section of the sprits'l that is about to have the seams sewn. Hopefully their shoes are clean. Tomorrow we'll get the mizzen and bonnet cut around and the tablings applied(and hopefully catch up on some service work).

Training Day

We are still waiting for rope. It will take about three weeks to get the rope that we want in the sizes we need. It is a special order item and has to be made by New England ropes. So in the mean time we have started learning and practicing the techniques we will use in the making of these sails. Our friend Stuart Hopkins came to the loft today and shared some of what he knows about roping, splicing cringles, and hand sewing grommets. It was an interesting day and all of us learned quite a bit. These three tasks will take up the majority of the time in this project and we will surely be quite good at them by the time we are through. I estimate we will hand sew about 375 grommets in this suit of sails, and will rope over 600' of sail edge. Each of these sails will get ropes around all four (three in the mizzen) edges.

Stuart has agreed to work with us on this project as our "special projects consultant." He has a loft, named Dabbler Sails, that is about 20 miles from ours and he specializes in making sails for small traditional craft. He has a nice website: http://www.dabblersails.com/. In the picture above at right he is showing Angie and Justin about siezing a clew once it has been wormed, parceled, and served. The siezing holds the loop in place and creates a transition from clew to sail.

The cloth has arrived

A truck pulled up to the loft late last week with a 700 pound delivery of sailcloth! The order consisted of 1300 yards of Oceanus cloth in both #10 and #13 weight. This is a cloth that has the hand and look of a natural fiber cloth but is built of polyester (Dacron) so that it has great durability and of course won't rot. The smaller sails will be built of the lighter stuff and the main topsail as well as the two courses and bonnets will be built of the heavy. So the cloth is all here and we are now in the process of selecting the rope for the edges. It is not such an easy thing as the stretch characteristics of the rope must work with the cloth, and the rope must be able to take a dye to give it a tarred look. We will use a polyester three strand type rope but there are many from which to choose. Our first pick is not available in the 1" diameter required for the heavier sails. Hopefully this will be resolved shortly and we'll be making sails in the next week or two. In the mean time we have several modern sails to build so the loft will stay plenty busy.

Welcome

Latell Sailmakers has been in business for over eight years. We have mainly worked with modern boats but are now finding ourselves making sails for several traditional craft. The biggest job we have going on right now is a full suit of sails for a 116' 120 ton ship that is a replica of an early 17th century merchant ship. We have done much of the preliminary work for this project and will be starting the build process soon. The purpose of this blog is to keep anyone who is interested up to date on this and other traditional sailmaking projects. Stay tuned....