- using domestic equipment. For a dinghy or day-boat, the cost of a set of sails may be more than the cost of materials for the rest of the boat. If you are making your own boat, why not go the whole hog and make the sails as well? The tools required are minimal and most of the stitching can be done on a domestic sewing machine.

Rather than being a mystery, the construction of a sail is broken down into it's different structural parts in much the same way as the hull structure of a boat with 76 clear diagrams showing the construction techniques used to make up the components of the sail. The chapters include a detailed look at the different stitches and seam constructions used, finishing techniques, step by step guides to the making of both Bermudan and Gaff/Gunter/Lug sails and Headsails. Also included is a section on the re-cutting of old sails and on fault finding. The whole manual will give the owner who already has a suit of sails, a better understanding of how his sails work and what may be wrong if he has a problem with them.

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Here is a review of this book by Rob Rohde-Szudy

I have been slowly gearing up to make a set of "real" sails for my Bolger light schooner, from real sailcloth. Accordingly I have been reading all the books on sailmaking I can lay my hands on. Regrettably, the majority are voluminous tomes aspiring to be the definitive, exhaustive work on the topic. This encyclopedic breadth might be useful to the professional sailmaker who runs into a difficult problem. But for the average handyman who wants to make a sail, it is quite difficult to dig the applicable how-to out of the surrounding history and voodoo.

Yes, voodoo indeed. Too many canvas books are afflicted with the idea that working with cloth occurs in a magical parallel dimension where measurements have no meaning and only long-bearded, pointy-hatted sages can contemplate the mysteries of where to place a seam. Thankfully we can turn to authors like Paul Fisher.

Receiving this book is a different experience than we are accustomed to in North America. It ships from the UK, so shipping takes longer and costs more than usual. When the book arrived I was underwhelmed at first. My first glance revealed a slim self-published volume with several typos and no color photos. It actually sat on my shelf for a month or two before I looked again.

I guess I should have gotten to it sooner, because it would have saved me a lot of time. In 53 pages Mr. Fisher tells the home sailmaker everything he needs to know, illustrated with crisp, explicit line drawings. After reading (or trying to…) some of the other books on the topic, this feat seemed impossible. But he can do it because of what he leaves out. First of all, there is no history. He focuses only on materials you will use today, and how to get the most out of them. No cotton, no flax, no square rigs. He addresses only the sail types common to modern homebuilt boats, including gaff and lug – vital information missing from many larger works.

He also addresses only the size sails we commonly need. This work is not burdened with the monstrously strong constructions you will need for that five-tonner you'll never have time to sail.

Best of all he removes the hocus-pocus. As the author points out in the introduction, if sailmaking was truly a black art, it would be impossible to use computers to both design and cut modern sails. We can do the same with tape measures and pencils, and he shows us how. What more can one ask?

Well, maybe we could ask for some practical hints from someone who has made a lot of sails. Again, Fisher delivers. Who knew that when hand seaming, you should twist the thread after each stitch to keep it from unlaying itself? I have seen sail twine do this in my own stitching, but never has it occurred to me that the remedy would be so simple and obvious. Or that I wouldn't find it in the thicker books.

In short, this work is exactly the kind of writing the do-it-yourselfer needs. No nonsense, no mystery, and straight to the point with useable how-to.

Rob Rohde-Szudy
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
robrohdeszudy@yahoo.com