A kevlar allergy is definitely an interesting one!
I gotta ask what you mean by patches. Judging by the fact you seem to mostly work on racing ships and other very expensive sailing ships, I’m guessing you don’t mean patches in the sense of filler material to fix holes?
Well, kinda. Imagine there’s a tear in the sail, you’d put a patch on it. And on a laminate, or plastic, sail it would be like a big sticker. Or if there is a place where you know something is going to rub constantly, you’d put a chafe patch. And as laminates aren’t very strong when they’re punctured, like with a sewing needle, you’d put reinforcing patches under whatever you want to sew down.
Tbh, I haven’t worked with laminate sails in a long time. I did service and repair work in my shop mostly, for regular sailors. Honestly I used to get a fair bit of work from the bigger lofts where small repair work wasn’t worth it for them to do. And really, these sails aren’t just for big fancy race boats, any sailing club with racers (which is pretty much all of them) will have people with laminate sails. The general public only sees the big races, like the americas cup or vendee globe, but every Wednesday night around the world, there’s regular people out racing.
A kevlar allergy is definitely an interesting one!
I gotta ask what you mean by patches. Judging by the fact you seem to mostly work on racing ships and other very expensive sailing ships, I’m guessing you don’t mean patches in the sense of filler material to fix holes?
Well, kinda. Imagine there’s a tear in the sail, you’d put a patch on it. And on a laminate, or plastic, sail it would be like a big sticker. Or if there is a place where you know something is going to rub constantly, you’d put a chafe patch. And as laminates aren’t very strong when they’re punctured, like with a sewing needle, you’d put reinforcing patches under whatever you want to sew down.
Tbh, I haven’t worked with laminate sails in a long time. I did service and repair work in my shop mostly, for regular sailors. Honestly I used to get a fair bit of work from the bigger lofts where small repair work wasn’t worth it for them to do. And really, these sails aren’t just for big fancy race boats, any sailing club with racers (which is pretty much all of them) will have people with laminate sails. The general public only sees the big races, like the americas cup or vendee globe, but every Wednesday night around the world, there’s regular people out racing.