I personally would use the shelf foot method, coupled with Arne's method for joining the panels and creating batten pockets. You can make the shelves in one piece and join the middle pieces with vertical seams. I'd use Top Gun 9... Top Gun is really too heavy for a cambered sail of this size, it would make the sail a poor performer in light airs as the sail would be slow to inflate.

If you need more advise, feel free to contact me directly.

Hi Arne! Yes that Stavanger Rally was great fun. I was really impressed with a lot of the boats, maybe especially Samson going quite fast in not that much wind with the low SA/D.

The sail is going to be as the enclosed drawing from Victor. It is not exactly the same as the current flat sail that just has the top triangle split in two. Victor's is split in three as is common with your designs. So in the new sail each panel will be slightly smaller. The SA/D is 17, quite a lot and on the wind, we often reef as early as high F4 or low F5, if my eyeballing of wind force is correct. So one goal with the new sail is also to be able to reef down more of the top part than before.

I was thinking about the method of just adding cloth were needed as in the Edmond Dantes file. It sure uses the least amount of cloth, but I have to make a scale drawing of the jig saw puzzle to calculate the actual differences. 

One thing I was thinking about is if there is some other benefit from splitting panels in half and using half "R" in each horizontal seam. Top Gun is not that stretchy and I thought that maybe that would mean less wrinkles. Or maybe there wouldn't be a difference with splitting R in two? 

Best/Matti

After 13 years I am finally going to get some camber. Guess the flat sail has been quite OK, after all. Now I am looking at the different methods of getting that camber. I haven't really followed the different methods and peoples experiences with them over the years. The problem is that I have quite wide panels, as can be seen in the enclosed drawing (made by Victor Winterthun).

On my flat sail, that I made 13 years ago, I used Top Gun. It is still in perfect shape not being covered withstanding sun and rain. (Not counting that "bullet hole" my father put into it when adding grommets.) So I think I might use Top Gun again. Or maybe Top Gun 9 instead, since people seem to like that and as I understand it the cloth is even less stressed with a cambered sail.

Now to the question: Since Top Gun and Top Gun 9 comes 1575 mm wide it will not be enough for my lower panels, when I include the rounds, if using the barrel method. So I think that leaves me with some alternatives. Either I sew two horizontal panels for each panel, maybe add half the "barrel cut" for each. Or I use the batten shelf method.

I think someone said that joining two panels with half the barrel cut in each should work fine. I just don't remember who and if anyone really tried it out.

I find it hard to visualize the different methods of sewing camber, honestly. I just currently understood how the batten shelf method actually works! Another alternative would be using vertical panels and broadseam. But I don't really understand that method. 

So any ideas will be appreciated so I can actually get this long overdue project done this winter!

/matti