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Remove sand from sewn channels of foil sail


8thelephant

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The sand grains came in through the leading edge air intakes, fell towards the trailing edge when the kite was upright and worked their way between the stitches into the trailing edge seam. Just reverse the process. It will be long and tedious and you must be careful not to apply too much pressure and movement since sand is what sandpaper is made of, and we know what that will do to sail material and thread.

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Thanks Mark,

I've followed your excellent advice and removed quite a bit of sand from the sail. A hairdryer on the cool setting (no heat) inside each channel helped to extract about 80% of the debris and I did a little wiggling for another 10%.  I've been contemplating the addition of a little slit/opening so I can feed a long piano wire+pipe cleaner in the trailing edge and either sewing or retaping it after cleaning is done. A few grains in there is ok for now though since I will continue to use this kite to teach others to fly :D

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18 hours ago, 8thelephant said:

Thanks Mark,

I've followed your excellent advice and removed quite a bit of sand from the sail. A hairdryer on the cool setting (no heat) inside each channel helped to extract about 80% of the debris and I did a little wiggling for another 10%.  I've been contemplating the addition of a little slit/opening so I can feed a long piano wire+pipe cleaner in the trailing edge and either sewing or retaping it after cleaning is done. A few grains in there is ok for now though since I will continue to use this kite to teach others to fly :D

You can close the space by folding the part of the edge below the seam over and running a stitch down the length of the trailing edge. Sand can't get into a space that doesn't exist. Of course the more sand you can remove before running the additional seam the better. 

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