Cheap and cheerful sail materials.

[soundman]

Here's one for the scottsman out there.

What the go with cheap sail materials.

I know thet the early puddle ducks had blue poly tarp for sail a,d I've seen this used elsewhere.

What other materials that apeal to the tightwad and perform are out there.

cheers

[scooter]

Tyvek house wrap is very tough & I think I've seen pics of sails made out of it.

Google is the go.


Cheers...................Sean

[PAR]

Tyvek house wrap has holes in it, which isn't the best thing for sail material. There are three different types of Tyvek, two don't have holes. It can be a bit stretchy, it makes a terrible noise when slating about and UV will break it down pretty quickly.

Nylon "rip stop" is good for light air sails and has been used for some manufactured spinnakers. It too is stretchy, but holds it's stitching well.

Poly tarp can work though the selection of material is important, as there are several different weights, yarn and weave density. Generally you'll want as dense a fabric as you can get (14 x 14 weave with a 1200 or high denier).

[bitingmidge]

Our first PDRacer sails were the lightest blue polytarp and they worked well. We certainly got our $10 worth out of them and they are still going.

The current batch are the really expensive heavier stuff, cost $60 each :oo:, but they are very durable.

Unlike most of the Polytarp advocates, we use proper eyelets, double sided tape to hold it all together, and sew the seams and have what appears to be a quite servicable solution.

I just bought a spool of the heaviest polyester thread I could find (in black to help with the UV resistance) for $2.00 from the Warehouse. We stitch using a triple zigzag stitch on the ubeaut quilting machine! :roll:

Tyvek isn't available in Oz in the weights you'd need, although I did a lot of research into it a few years ago. The stretching was what discounted it for us. It looks like a great material, but is simply not durable enough.

It'll take you 4-6 hours to make a sail properly so you'd like to have something that lasted at least that long on the water!

As PAR says rip-stop is fine for spinnakers, but it isn't cheap either, or at least not cheap by my definition.

See here for how to build simple Polytarp sails: (http://homepage.mac.com/peterhyndman/Sites/PDRinfo/PDRbuilding/sails.html)

Cheers,

P

I was going to post a pic, but embedding is turned off in this forum!
Poly Sail Pic (http://homepage.mac.com/peterhyndman/Sites/PDRinfo/PDRhistory/historyPictures/Resources/duck003.jpeg)

[Boatmik]

Howdy,

As the wind blows a sail will generally try to become fuller in the middle or maybe the back half of the sail.

With a woven fabric you can put tension in the luff with a cunningham eye or use halyard tension and flatten the sail and move the maximum depth of the sail back to where it should be.

It is because the sail does not distort much along the threads but distorts quite readily at 45deg to them - termed "bias stretch"

This also assumes your sail has been cut correctly - the threads need to be parallel to the leach of the sail.

Tyvek is not a woven fabric.

So this mechanism won't work very effectively meaning the sail will distort in stronger winds and there will be much less that can be done.

The other beaut thing about using polytarp ... is you can just go out and get one - at least for smaller boats. As the boat gets bigger the weight of the cloth will have to be increased substantially over the cheap polytarps you can get at K-mart and similar businesses.

Michael

[echnidna]

What about Nylon shower curtains?

[Wood Butcher]

I was going to post a pic, but embedding is turned off in this forum!
Poly Sail Pic (http://homepage.mac.com/peterhyndman/Sites/PDRinfo/PDRhistory/historyPictures/Resources/duck003.jpeg)

Strange :? But now fixed :2tsup:

[Boatmik]

What about Nylon shower curtains?

I like the decorative possibilities, but usually they are too light and nylon stretches very easily and changes size when wet.

And you are back to the problem of having to sew the sail up out of lots of small pieces. Can be totally avoided with the polytarp method where the basic cloth is quite wide.

By the way the stretchiness and strength makes nylon the el primo rope for anchoring. They generally allow you to use a smaller diameter rope compared to conventional alternatives because of the shock absorbancy. But it is expensive.

MIK

[b.o.a.t.]

Here's one for the scottsman out there.
What the go with cheap sail materials.
I know thet the early puddle ducks had blue poly tarp for sail a,d I've seen this used elsewhere.
What other materials that apeal to the tightwad and perform are out there.
cheers

Polytarp is available in other colours... :U

Me... I've had such good success with cheap blue polytarp that I haven't seriously considered anything else. Hardest thing is getting hold of good quality outdoor-use double-sided fibreglass carpet tape. Bunnings sell it, but haven't found it even at pool carpet suppliers !!
http://members.aol.com/polysail/HTML/article.htm

This sail on a little cat I cooked up for my daughter is the most complicated I've made. Battens are those plastic strips used between bathroom paneling. It is so good that I used it mostly on my Teal (as seen in my avatar). The cat is on eBay at the moment so the sail goes with it. :C
cheers
AJ

[soundman]

Hmm I have a good source of all sorts of double sided tape up here.
Last roll I baught was $80 pluss, but very funky tape, very strong bond.

Are these poly tarps actulay polyester.... if so.... that could present some problems with some adhesives.

I have a pile of samles here i should do some testing.

OH BTW how does the teal go?
Did you buy plans or build it out of the book?
Did you build it just like the book or a bit different.

cheers