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New life for old sails: RECUTS

Seth

Sustaining Partner
Many times, a sail which has a hooked leech (headsail) or draft too far aft (main or headsail), or too much/not enough luff curve (main or headsail) can be greatly improved with a savy sailmakers' scissors and sewing machine.

Apart from the leech issue-the best candidates for recuts are NOT old, beat up sails, but fairly new ones that simply were not built right. Sadly, more than a few sails will leave the floor with the wrong luff curve, and/or the draft too far fwd or aft. These sails can usually be recut. The luff curve is the easiest of the 2-you may lose a few inches of area, but an overly deep (too much luff curve) sail can me made properly deep with a long batten laid along the luff to draw the better curve, and slicing away. The overly flat (at the luff) can have a new deeper luff curve added, but you will lose some of sail in the process.

Similarly, seams can be opened and reshaped to add, remove, or move the draft location.

Sail shape and draft are a COMBINATION of luff curve and shaping in the seams, so if you have a too flat or too full sail, a good sailmaker can tell you after seeing it which type of surgery is required (or maybe both is needed to get it right).

The easiest sails to recut are crosscut sails, but tri radial sails can certainly have the luff reshaped and the shaping seams (the 2-3 horizontal seams you will see on most tri-radial sails) can also be opened up and reshaped.

So far, we have been talking about recuts for shape purposes. Another reason is if you buy a used sail from an E-38 for your E-34(for example). It will need to be shortened at the luff and the clew raised. Again, crosscut sails are easiest. Tri radial sails can be a problem if re-sizing, because they are designed to align the loads coming from each corner with the largest threads in the sailcloth. If you need to raise the clew for example, once you get more than a foot or so up the leech from the clew, and press a new clew ring at that point, the threads will no longer be aligned with the loads coming from the "new" clew. The sail will be weaker and tend to distort. Tri radials CAN be re-sized, but within pretty small limits. Dacron crosscut sails have a wider range of "re-sizability".

Back to that leech issue on genoas. Many times the leech of a #1 genny(for example) will begin to degrade from the loading, tacking, and abuse we tend to give these sails, and it can happen well before the rest of the fabric begins to deteriorate. In this case, it often makes sense to lay a long batten just inside and parallel to the leech curve (where the fabric is still fresh), and cut along that line, and re-attach the leech tape. You have really just cut away the "dead" fabric,and while you lost a little sail area, it was not very good sail area any more-now the air can leave the leech of the sail cleanly again!!

Older sails can benefit from recutting to some degree, but not with as good a result. If the leech on the main is falling off, for example, but the rest of the sail still looks good, a sailmaker can go in and take up a few of the shaping seams (crosscut or tri radial) to "pick up" the leech.

The concern with recutting old sails is money spent. It may be worth throwing $400-500 at a fresh sail that had a few problems, but an old, tired sail, even though it can be improved some, can be a losing proposition. I would limit recut dollars on old sails to $100-200 at the most.

Anyway-this should open the thread as Ted requested. If there are specific questions, just post them and I will answer as best I can..

Cheers,

S
 
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ted_reshetiloff

Contributing Partner
I have a 140'ish genoa that I think is 6-8 years old but has not had that much use. Ths cloth and stitching appear to be in good shape and the overall shape of the sail is pretty decent. It even reefs to 125% with pretty decent shape. The UV covers on it are pretty shot though. They were made from sunbrella that has faded and stretched out to the point where there are wrinkles in the cloth and the leech and foot look pretty bad. I am considering replacing the covers with dacron and am wondering how much this "cleaning up of the leech" will improve the sail? The sailmaker has quoted me a cost of $7/foot to put new sacrificial dacron on assuming I remove the old covers. Otherwise it will cost more to pay them to remove the old covers. My guess is it will be about $500. Not sure if its worth it. I am hoping to squeeze another season out of this sail. Also will the dacron covers be lighter than the sunbrella?
 

Seth

Sustaining Partner
check it out

Probably worth it.

$7/foot is about right. If the body of the sail is in good shape then it is worth it to replace the cover with dacron. Dacron will be lighter AND stronger than the Sunbrella. The thing to do is after the Sunbrella is off, have them take a hard look at the leech. If it is beat up, they can do this (it is called "hollowing" the leech-or adding more leech holllow), and it is worth it again if the rest of the sail is solid. If they are going to put a new cover on, it should be very minimal to cut a new leech curve and replace the leech tape-it IS work, but should be no more than about $150.00 for this part of the job-maybe less. The curve can be drawn and the leech cut in about 20 minutes. It needs about 1 hour of sewing, and about $40 in materials (just between us!). I thought we discussed this very sail already???

If you do all this, the sail should be good for several more seasons. For just one more season, I would just remove the old Sunbrella, and leave it alone. For one summer it won't matter if you have a cover or not-especially if you are tossing the sail away anyway.

Ya dig?

S
 

ted_reshetiloff

Contributing Partner
I had not thought of just pulling the cover for a summer and letting it go. I may do that as I am going to buy a new genoa this fall. On another note my buddy got his FX assym in the mail as promised in 5 weeks. He said the sail looks awesome. The stitching and overall quality of the workmanship is as good or better than any of his name brand kites. We discussed the quality of the fabric they used and it remains to be seen what the shape looks like, but I am optimistic for him.
 

Seth

Sustaining Partner
Sounds great

I'm sure it will be fine-and no matter what, I have a feeling you will tell us!
 

Bob in Va

Member III
Just did it

As per Seth's recommendation, I had this modification done on a two and a half year old genoa and just got the sail back a week ago. The original Sunbrella was in good shape, but definitely compromised the leech shape in light air - we got a wavy shape we called the "theatre curtain" effect. The new UV dacron strip struck me as being heavier and stiffer than I expected, but the difference was quite noticeable - we raced yesterday in conditions ranging from 15 kts to dead calm, and the leech always shaped nicely. Price was about what you indicated - I removed the Sunbrella myself with a seam ripper in a couple of hours, a pretty straightforward job once you develop the technique of correct pressure and angle. The sail is still in real good shape (and we finished well in the race,) so I consider it money well spent.
 

Seth

Sustaining Partner
Dacron leech covers

Great to hear you have new life in that genoa!

FWIW, my guess is that it only seems heavier because the dacron is new, and still has the resin intact. This will add stiffness to the fabric for several seasons until the resin breaks down. The weight of any Sunbrella fabic is about 9 oz. per sq. yard, and the UV dacron used for this application is either 3.5 or 5.5 oz. per yard, with the 3.5 most common in boats under about 35 feet. The resin may add an ounce or so to the actual weight, but it can't actually be heavier. This is exaggerated by the fact that the old sunbrella, having lost all of its' strength and "form", will apper to be lighter in weight.

To explain the resin thing, some (most, actually) dacrons are impregnated with resin to improve bias integrity-meaning stretch along the 45 degree angle to the actual yards, which are woven in a crisss-cross pattern.).

Some dacrons have a tighter weave, and some have a looser weave-depends on what the fabric is designed for. A loose weave obviously will have less strength along the bias-and is more likely to have resin, and the tighter weave fabrics, like good cruising cloth where performance is desired, but a soft "hand" is important, will not have as much resin (or none at all). A true performance dacron will have a looser weave (but BIG threads), and resin applied for the bias control. It will be stiff and hard to flake (better to roll sails made from this), but perform very well.

Many "in between" fabrics have some resin, but not too much-there is a wide spectrum of fabric choices out there-loose weave/tight weave, resin/no resin, some resin..depends what you want out of your sails.

The RF UV dacrons tend to have some resin as well-just makes them stronger.

Eventually this will break down and soften, but you now have a lighter, better performing sail-and that is a good thing!:cool:

Glad it worked out!

Seth
 

windjunkee

Member III
Seth,

Boy, when you write on a subject, you certainly write alot.

Anyway, we had an older dacron headsail recut and luff tape added in the place of hanks, but we don't use it much as it is our high wind sail.

We also had a little used spinnaker recut to fit our PHRF specs. (it was way too big) Ullman charged us for the time at, I believe, about $1.25 a minute. Total cost on the spinnaker was about $550.00. It is a 1.2 oz. sym. spinnaker so it will be our heavy air chute and the material is still solid. We haven't taken it out to test yet since the recut. We're still waiting on the $#($*&)@@ mainsheet traveller to come back from Garhauer (two months and counting since we placed the order and gave them our curved track). I wanna go sail.

Jim McCone
Voice of Reason E-32-2 Hull #134
 

Seth

Sustaining Partner
Maybe too much?

Sorry if it is getting to be too much-I started this thread on a suggestion from another thread where we were discussing recuts, and it seemed like a good time to clear up some misunderstandings on the topic..I admit I can get carried away....
Anyway, that is a fair price to have a solid heavy air kite made right for your boat.

Let us know how things go-I'll be out for Ensenada!

Seth
 
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