ot how to manufacture sails?

raser13 · Post by **raser13** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:37 pm

hey guys, some of you may know that i'm building a sail ship enterprise and i was wondering if any of you would know of a good way to make realistic looking sails. the ones on the base that i started with are plastic and atrocious. i was thinking of like a thinner white material ,tea stained, and some how molded into sails at full wind. any suggestions on matterials to stain with, make up the sails, or stiffen the said fabric would be great. any sugestions on how to form them decently would also be loved

en'til Zog · Post by **en'til Zog** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 5:13 pm

My only thought would be to use the plastic sails as molds, drape the tea stained fine cloth over 'em, and spray 'em down with FUTURE or something like it to make the cloth hold it's shape. Let dry. Trim to size....

HTH

Ti Raven · Post by **Ti Raven** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 5:44 pm

Coffee filters.

Moisten them with a thined white glue, let dry.

Try both cutting to shape before and after the 'sizing'.

Kylwell · Post by **Kylwell** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 8:04 pm

IIRC most the hard core sailing ship guys use fine muslin for the sails. It's naturally tannish and has a fine weave.

Pat Amaral · Post by **Pat Amaral** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 9:03 pm

You can also use high-thread-count bed sheet material (basically the same thing as muslin). Cut your patterns, soak them in white glue and drape them over the kit sails as formers. When they dry out, you can paint them with a mist of clear smoke to get that "antiqued" look. Finally cut to size. For a little more realism, you can use a pencil to lightly draw very thin vertical lines about 1/4" apart all the way across each sail. The sails in the pics here look like what I'm talking about. By the way, that kit is a lot like how the Enterprise would have looked. Not exactly but similar

Ti Raven · Post by **Ti Raven** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 9:33 pm

Get old pillow cases from Ye Olde Thrifty Shoppe.

Some thinned tea makes a great ager.

Andrew Gorman · Post by **Andrew Gorman** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 9:56 pm

There's a good thread at:
http://cs.finescale.com/forums/350912/ShowPost.aspx
which covers most of the basics. There is also a good ship board at
http://modelshipworld.com/phpBB2/index.php
and the SeawaysShipmodelingList at groups.yahoo.com
I have some drafting linen I'd swap for just about anything interesting if you wanted to give that a try.

raser13 · Post by **raser13** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 11:46 pm

first off thank you all for the replies.i didn't think i would get that many.i think i'm going to try to do some tea stained tissue paper as the base ship i started with is fairly small.one of the guys at the links mentioned that on small models that some have used tissue and got good results. so to stay with scale i think fabric might just be to thick and would look kind of gaudy. any ideas as how to weather these besides tea stain. i would assume that sails with rain and sea water would get a little molded over time. just thin down black dull paint and let it run down the sail?