palm and needle seamanship...

[Bob Aberton]

My boat's hull is almost done, now it's time to get to work on the sails. I purchased "The Sailmaker's Apprentice," by Emiliano Marino, and to teach myself the techniques, I plan on making the ditty bag described in Chapter 1.

The materials in general are not a problem for me. However, the author states that high quality, custom-made palms are "essential," and both are needed in the making of the ditty bag.

I don't intend to sew sails frequently enough to justify getting two professional quality palms. There is a third type of palm, the "sailor's palm." It is basically a much more cheaply made hybrid of seaming and roping palm; it can accept even the largest size sail needles, but it is adequate for seaming work, and has no thumb guard. Marino states that this type of palm is both useless and a waste of money.

However, can anyone familiar with this sort of thing tell me if I really need both palms for making the ditty bag, or can I get by with just a cheap sailor's palm, altered to fit my hand?

Incidentally, for those who haven't read this book, the ditty bag touches on all facets of sailmaking; sewing seams, patches, tabling, etc., and involves ropework (namely sewing cringles, a boltrope, and some other strings onto the bag.)

If I do need both palms, can anyone tell m a good place to get them at a reasonable price?

[ 07-31-2003, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: Bob Aberton ]

[NormMessinger]

What is good enough for me is not likely for Todd Bradshaw. I got my palm from, um, well, can't remember for sure, Hamilton Marine maybe Sailrite or ever West Marine. They all look and cost much the same. Can't remember if it is a sail makers palm or a roaping palm. It has a buckle to fit a variety of hands. I soaked mine in water and then used it 'til it dried to make it fit. It is plenty good enough for casual use.

As you plan to, I made the ditty bag first. I also sewed eyes in some of the sails I made and leathered the corners.

My ditty bag from the book turned out okay except when I spliced the eye in the rope handles it put a twist in them that is annoying. Sailrite sells a materials kit but it seem extremely pricie.

My experience suggests waiting to get the best palm until you go professional.

[Dave Fleming]

Might as well get a good roping palm. You will find that the extra pull or leverage it gives you is a plus.
We must have some sailmakers on the Forums and I hope one of them sees this thread.
You list Rhode Island as your base, why not trundle down to the nearest sailmaker and ask them.
Mine is almost as old as I am, came from England, Ratsey and Lapthorn. My needles are Smiths also from the other side of the pond.
Hervey Garrett Smith wrote a book on Marlinespike Seamanship and another on the Arts of the Sailor. Been my sources for much stuff over the years.
Don't forget to make yourself up a block of pine tar and beeswax to run your thread and marline through. Makes pulling doubled up thread ever so much easier.
To carry your needles and keep the rust off them, cut a piece of bamboo saving one joint to form the bottom of your needle carrier.
It should be long enough for your biggest needle.
Put a ball of cotton with some light oil or a couple of pieces of camphor,keeps the rust off those steel needles in the bottom and whittle a stopper out of some nice hardwood scrap to fit the bamboo. Drill a hole just big enough to take a thickness of marline and thread it through the hole,put a stopper knot or a big fat overhand knot on the end and put a whipping on the other end around the outside of the bamboo
to keep from losing your stopper. Add a good seaman's knife and you are all set and lookin'salty too!

[paladin]

I have had all my stuff so long I dunn fergitt from whence it came.....the ropers palm is a good idea..and Daves suggestion with the needles..I soaked my palm like Norm but after it dried I started working a little neetsfoot oil into it to soften it a bit.....gitt bunches of different needles and duplicates and a good pair of needle nose pliers....also a neeeeaaat little book is Frank Rosenow's "Ditty Bag Book".....then practice...practice..practice...

[brian.cunningham]

I thought www.sailrite.com (http://www.sailrite.com) sold them.

can't testify to the quality.

[Todd Bradshaw]

I suppose it will depend on just how much hand sewing you plan to do. You're pretty well limited to Smith palms in the U.S. and I don't know of anyone custom making palms here. The basic Smith adjustable palm with the large plastic shield, the buckle on the back and at least the suggestion of a thumb-guard for roping (retail $15-$20 or so) will work for limited amounts of stuff, but isn't something that I would attempt to hand-sew an entire sail with.
http://www.sailmakerssupply.com/Store_Pages/Photo_Pages/Palms.htm
I believe Sailrite sells a similar palm. The big plastic shield can be important as sometimes you're concentrating on the forward part of the needle and miss the iron with the aft end of it and don't notice it. The thick layers of leather and rawhide around the iron on a premium palm, and to some extent, the big plastic plate on this one help keep you from accidentally burying the back end of the needle into your hand. What the utility palm lacks in "punching power by being soft can usually be made-up for by pulling the last part of the needle through with a pair of pliers, though it's pretty hard on needles.

The thumb-guard is quite handy for ring-sewing, roping and other situations where you really need to pull hard on the thread to snug down the stitches. The one on the cheaper palm is better than nothing, but not by a lot. It just isn't stiff enough to really do the job well. You may find that putting in the stitch and then wrapping the thread a couple turns around something like the smooth shaft of a small screwdriver and then heaving away on that will get you tighter stitches, but it's a fairly slow way to sew.

On this web page, Sailmaker's Supply also lists the medium grade Smith palms - (scroll down on the palm thingy to their "professional grade" palm at about $48).
http://www.sailmakerssupply.com/Store_Pages/Hand_Sewing.html

They don't show a picture of it, but it's most likely this one, which is one of mine that I use a fair amount. Mine is a roping palm and you can see the heavy thumb-guard.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid29/p8adef03e6ef96abc7d524a261d980b1a/fd5f4f80.jpg

I don't have the patience to hand-seam sails and it takes years of practice to really do it well (something I'm really not too keen on spending a lot of time doing anyhow) so I don't even own a seaming palm. Seaming is boring. I'll let my machine do the seaming and concentrate my hand-sewing time on the more interesting trim work. Unless you're planning on actually hand-seaming sails, with the smaller thread and smaller needles required, you'll probably get a lot more use out of a roping palm.

[Clyderigged]

I would recommend against buying a sailor’s palm and stick with either a seaming or roping palm. The iron in a roping palm has larger indents for the use of bigger needles. If you are using your palm for some seam repair & making a ditty bag, you will probably be using #15 needles. They tend to swim around a bit in the iron of a roping palm, so I would recommend a good ($35.00-40.00) seaming palm. I have bought mine through Bainbridge-Aquabatten but they are also available at
http://www.woodenboat.org/store/folder.asp?f=255 The “Ditty bag book” is a wonderful resource. Here is my ditty bag that I made out a piece of Scottish Flax from the New Zealand built HMAV BOUNTY replica I sailed on for several years. The sails were built by Ratsey & Lapthorn in Cowes. Wonderful stuff to furl unless it is wet.
Jamie White
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid72/pa8d59441827112202101796b99b7688c/fb84d4ad.jpg http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid72/p008c901b497413cfa9c59003449d7456/fb84d4a9.jpg

[Todd Bradshaw]

Yep, those "Store Quality" models would be a good choice. Just in case you decide to go wild and invest in a "Best Quality" palm, make sure you can return it if it doesn't fit. The last batch that the sailcloth companies imported into the U.S. were pretty small. I ordered one and couldn't even get my hand into it. I ended up taking it apart, soaking it until the pieces were flat, making patterns from them, enlarging the patterns, buying new leather and rawhide and re-making it. At least the iron was re-usable but that's kind of an expensive way to get an iron.

I usually soak mine for a half-day or so, put them on, do some sewing so that it molds to my hand, take it off very carefully and let it dry to that shape for a couple days. Then I take fine sandpaper and slightly round over the sharp edges where they contact my hand. I don't put any kind of leather dressing or softening stuff on them. The stiffer they are, the better, but it takes a while to break one in.

Soaking will lift some of the varnish or paint on them, but I've never bothered to re-varnish one for that reason and mine seem to be doing fine. For some crazy reason, the "Best Quality" Smith palms come painted with ugly black enamel instead of varnish. They look like they were painted by a nine-year-old with a push broom. It's kind of a shame since without it, they're very nice pieces of leatherwork. I scraped the paint off my old one and varnished it, just because I couldn't stand to look at it.

[Dave Fleming]

Soaking will lift some of the varnish or paint on them Ah Ha, comes the dawn!

I clearly remember some bits of stuff floating in the water after I applied boiling water to my roping palm. It has been one of those niggling things that nest in the corners of my frazzled brain.

[thering]

I bought both the roping (with a buckle on the back) and the seaming palm from Sailrite to make my bag from the Apprentice. Both worked well after I cinched them down and /or cut off a bit and put new lashing holes in them - apparently I have very small hands. I recently decided that I never really liked the way the seaming palm fit, so I bought another pair (roping and seaming) of the "store quality" from woodenboat.org. (One of the descriptions says "sore quality" - accurate in first use, but same thing.) Again I had to cut and punch quite a bit to get them small enough after a good soak, which only took an hour or so for me on two successive nights. In any case, I'm really much happier with them and I only realized how comfortable the roping palm was the other day when I jumped into whipping a line without it... ouch. If I had to get just one I could definitely seam with the roping palm. Once I got them shaped I could accidently sit on them and only damage myself without doing any injury to the palms.

Trent Hering

[Todd Bradshaw]

It's probably also worth noting that once the ditty bag is done a seaming palm's use may be somewhat limited. If you intend to seam sails made from modern Dacron, rather than cotton, other natural fiber cloths or synthetic canvas-like fabrics such as Oceanus and Clipper Canvas, understand that the typical hard finished Dacron sailcloth doesn't hand sew very well. It's so thin and hard that the stitches don't bury into the cloth as the would on cotton. They sit right on top and even pros tend to get marginal to poor looking seams.

We had an interesting discussion thread a while back. There was a big fancy boat on the cover of an issue of WoodenBoat with yards and yards of sails, all of which, as Ian W. pointed out, had pretty nasty-looking wrinkles along their panel-to-panel seams. We spent a couple days trying to figure out what the sailmakers had done to generate the problem as these were fancy sails. It turned out that the owner of the boat had decided to pay to have all the seams of his Dacron sails hand-sewn. Perhaps this gave him a warm fuzzy feeling inside or something to brag about, but it sure didn't do much for the boat.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Well, like most of us, I suspect, I have collected all sorts of "marlinespike seamanship bits", over the years, and I seem to have no less than four palms, stuffed into three ditty bags, but the one that I have never been able to get on with is a Smith's top quality roping palm!

The most unusual one is a Dutch seaming palm which came from Des Pawson; it is completely unlike any of the Smiths palms - a soft bit of thick leather with an iron, much larger than the others, which has three lugs on it - the lugs are stitched to the palm. Very comfortable for seaming, but if you "miss" you know about it.

I do do quite a bit of seaming and as an amateur (a very different thing - my sister was a professional sailmaker for some years until the financial demands of a family forced her back into computing) I find it relaxing.

You can make a lot of stuff.

I have very few polyester sails on my boat, but I've repaired a good few yards of seam, chafed on passage, on polyester sails, over the years. It is absolutely worth carrying some proper polyester hand seaming twine - get it from your sailmaker as in my experience chandlers don't often sell it. The repair is easy, of course - you just sew through the machine holes and make a flat seam.

[ken mcclure]

Over the years I've found that buying a tool that's "just good enough" has always been a short-term solution to a long-term problem. And in many cases, it's been a downright disaster.

I'd advise that for any tool you plan to use for a long time, regardless of the amount of use, you're better off to buy the best available.

That way you know it'll always do what it's intended to do, and you shouldn't have to buy another one later.

[Tom Galyen]

Gentlemen,

I too made a dittybag using the instructions in "The Sailmakers Apprentice". I was very proud of it and have received many complements on it. I must of course state that I live in an area where there are no other people around who do such things and therefore there is no competition. I felt very proud of my skills achieved in doing it etc. etc. Then in this thread I saw the ditty bag made by Clyderigged and am completely blown away and stand in awe. That is a true work of art, and I see I have much to learn and many miles to go.

I bought my palm from Sailrite at a "Strictly Sail" show in Chicago several years ago and painted Neetsfoot oil on it. I have wondered why it is still so uncomfortable to use and now I know why. It goes in a can of oil tonite.

I enjoy this forum for the info I receive.

Thank you all and especially Clyderigged for the great photos.

Tom G.

[Hughman]

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid72/p6deab3f818dc964dad54c09ad40788d7/fb8097e9.jpg

Ditty bag display, Camden, ME town office window, 2002

[Nicholas Carey]

FWIW, Toplicht (http://www.toplicht.de/) carries the Smith palms. They're not cheap—upwards of EU 60.00—but well made.

[Bob Aberton]

Thanks for all your help, guys...

By the way, for hand-sewing, is twine (in 3, 5, or 7 ply) as opposed to thread (in V-69, V-30, what have you), an absolute necessity?

Because I already have a roll of polyester V-69 thread that I haven't used much of, and it seems a shame to waste it.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Yes, you need real twine of some sort. V69 and V30 are middle and lightweight machine threads with a breaking strength of under ten pounds. There are a few twines that are graded with the V system. I have a spool of fairly lightweight twine, suitable for smaller rings and hand sewing, which is V462 - so you can imagine how much heavier it is than V69. The flat 5-ply twine is nice if you want to invest in a roll and places like West Marine usually have small spools of similar weight round stuff that will work fine.

[Vince Brennan]

bump

[2MeterTroll]

i am just cheap i guess. i use a sailors palm and i don't like a seaming or a roping palm. both are to cumbersome for fast work in my opinion. I also don't go buying needles from a sail loft i go to a rug store and pick up nice long rug needles some of them are very thin and work well with artificial sinew. took me awhile to find a sail palm that fit cause i have huge hands when i finally did i took my new palm down to the bay and soaked it for a couple hours then worked the curve i like into the rawhide.
took a bit of elk leather and glued it to the iron so my needles set correctly and don't rattle around. after a few boats i glue a new bit of leather on.

Hervy garret smith has probably the most well illustrated marlin spike basics book around. but then i like his writing style.

the needle case and care suggested is worth every second of the time it takes. I would add a bit of stockholm tar to a cotton ball in the bottom and putting your needles in the case eye first (ya i am backward) rust in the eye will chafe your twine to death. also i like my needles sharp so i keep a bit of 550 grit sandpaper in my needle case.

as folk said practice practice practice, the nice thing about canvas work is it makes fine gifts. its hard to get things like good deck buckets in many places so you almost always have some custom if you want.

as a skills concentration i would work on gromitts, its the rare hand that does a nice finish to these. you will get all the practice you need in seams with very few projects under your belt.

[Vince Brennan]

Dittybag/seabag grommet by Del (Tim) Timmerman of Iowa: #7 white sailtwine over a small bronze ring.

http://www.frayedknotarts.com/images/Timmerman/DTgrommet.jpg


Fancy grommets in a "star" by Luc Proveur of France (from a 2007 IGKT meeting in Dieppe)

http://www.frayedknotarts.com/images/Sailmaking/BagsNSuch/UnkDieppe2007-Willeke04-L.jpg


(Sorry the photo is so small) Stitched grommets with a laid-up marline grommet underneath instead of a metal ring. By Gabriel Richir of France (same meeting).

http://www.frayedknotarts.com/images/Sailmaking/BagsNSuch/Gabriel-Dieppe07-Willeke07L.jpg

[2MeterTroll]

LOL my point exactly. the first one by Del is really nice and spaced well but its stepped in closer the the ring than his starting stitch. (i have this problem as well unless i really watch what i am doing) the darn star grommits can drive a guy to drink (more) if you get any thing wrong.

I love the five side ditty bags. i made my mother in law one for Christmas.

Darnit Vince your making me want to start doing yet another canvas and knot project i have in mind. damn old bos'n you are, damned i say. ;)

[Vince Brennan]

Bump for a friend

[Vince Brennan]

bump for a friend