Picked up a copy of "The Sailmaker's Apprentice" by Emilio Marino, to try learn me the ancient arts of hand-stitching thick stuff. The first chapter consists of an apprenticeship by means of sewing a ditty bag in which to store all your tools. So, here we go. Marino recommends 13-oz canvas. I decided to use Dacron, as it's what I would sew sails out of, should I ever find myself sewing sails. Unfortunately, I picked 8.4-ounce Dacron, which is some serious heavy stuff. I believe daysailors tend to use 4-oz, and Nepenthe might have as much as 6...
Sailrite sells a sailmaker's bench hook, but it's essentially worthless as delivered. Took a few tries to file in the proper scorpion point into the hook. It's still not quite right; I filed in a triangular bit about the size of a sailmaker's needle, but I should have put the flat side on the *inside* of the hook, and the pointy side on the *outside*, so it won't rip the canvas if you pull too hard. Oh, well.
The bottom stitched on. Despite careful measuring, the sew-to line on the bottom piece was about a half-inch shorter in circumference than the bag. Luckily, I drew strike-up marks at the 1/8th points, so discovered this early on and only had to gather up 1/16th of an inch at a time to make things match.
Rope grommets in the making. I failed to find tarred marline at a reasonable price. Steveston Marine's web site claims to have it in $25 balls, but I didn't actually see on in store. I got some 1/4" polyester rope in a nice salty tan colour, that felt about right, unlaid it, waxed the strands heavily, and used that.
Finished grommets. They have a bit of a bulge where they're finished, but what can yae dae, laddie? They're also a fair bit big. Marino calls for "penny-sized" grommets, but these are closer to a loonie. Possibly the tarred marline would have been thinner stuff than unlaid 1/4"...
Marino's instructions were a bit sparse here. "Cut circles through the patches," without specifying how, or with what. I figured the theory was you should be able to make the ditty bag with the tools you intend to store in it, so I answered that with "carefully, and with a big knife." They came out not too far from round...
First set of grommets sewn in. Not the cleanest work, but it should do. I think for the next sets, I'll position the fat bulgy bit where the two grommets touch, as that will eventually get served over.
Second set of grommets sewn in. Only looking a bit uneven on the inside...
but the grommet itself is pretty lumpy on the outside. Oh, well.
Fourth pair of grommets sewn in and seized together. I think they're looking less ugly than the previous ones.
All boltroped. The big grommet only took about 9 tries to get it about the right size and not too twisted... It's still a bit small, but that's fine, because boltropes in theory should gather a bit of cloth into them. Untwisting the strands in a serious way before tucking them under at the splice makes it a lot less bulgy, apparently.
Now I need to make cringles and put thimbles into them, but that'll be easiest with a cringling fid, and the easiest way to make on of those is to wait until Megan gets her lathe :)
Bah. Got impatient :) Besides, given how huge my rope grommets ended up, these thimbles look way too small. I'll get new ones next time I have an order going in to Sailrite anyway; not worth spending $20 for shipping for $5.80 worth of thimbles... And it turns out with the fat line, I can't tie a cringle tight enough to need a fid anyway, so all the thimbles are a bit loose, but what can you do?