The lady who will be putting the sail together studied fibers in uni, is a knotting, knitting, and sewing enthusiast. She showed me some of the stuff in her her dress making books and machine quilting books that make all of what I am proposing look simple. Neither of us have worked with a hot knife, but I was thinking if we fused a clean edge we would have less folding and stitching to worry about.
If I intend to sew prestretched seatbelt material along both sides of the entire sail at the edge, and hand sew an outside boltrope do I have to worry about folding over the fabric for tabbing?
The batten hinges are intriguing, but more work and money. Hopefully I can find 20ft battens to trim down.
I have been playing around with the graph paper (Danger!), If I went with batten hinges too, I would probably build it to the Mallory sail plan. I think the low yard angle is a good thing, but the mate does like the HM sail plan aesthetic, and Arne's method is pretty straight forward. Plus, his drawing just seems to suit our boat, why overcomplicate a good thing?
Although I do love wing sails, and their cousins (it is what drew me to junk rigs) this is no race boat. I am pretty confident I would be spending a lot more money on a rig that is more complex, and would probably still not really be the best choice for my type of boat and travel plans.
Alas, I am a tinkerer, and don't want my experimental tendencies to de-rail my budget, or suitability of the rig for hard, long distance travel. I like to push the boat hard, and she loves it. Nothing like sledding along feeling like you have the power of a freight train. I have a tendency to hold onto as much sail area as I can, so we have gotten quick at sail change and reefing.
10% seems like a good number if both Arne and David concur. Probably means I will have obstacles if I deviate and try and stack on more cloth.
My goal is to not need an engine, and I can sail without one just fine in all but the lightest of breezes, since I have a large sail inventory. If I am not totally happy with just the junk, I am sure I could make a light weight drifter with an amsteel luff to fly from a spare halyard and retractable bowsprit.
If we just go for sewn in camber, we will lay them out as illustrated in Arne's documents, but turn the panels into a 3d shapes by adding splits and broad seems at points a,b,c,d on adding cambered panels to Badger issue 50, p4. This method would be for 10% sewn in camber.
If I have to join battens, I am really intrigued by the hinge and mild sewn camber method. This course, I would go for 4-5% camber with just barrel cut panels, and make up the rest of the camber with the hinges to hit 10% I just think it would be really slick to watch an articulating sail as I plow along. Anyone on here have a lathe, willing to make the hinges or a plug for a reasonable price? I was reading on here about a fellow who has good luck with poured hinges. If I am forced to join battens, it would be nice to do it this way.
More moving parts though, so naturally more things that can break. I imagine it a bit harder to fix a hinge or split batten at sea then sew in a patch or fix some stitching.