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Sail cleaning - Archived Thread re-posted


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Sail cleaning

 

wheels

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 7:55 am Post subject: Sail cleaning

 

I just went through the excercise of cleaning my sails. I was told along time ago that chlorine bleach was fine to use. I was talking to a local sailmaker and asked, "is something like gone in 60sec OK?" F#@%$NO!!! was his reply. He said the fabric would be OK, but the stitching would start failing in 18mths. He had a powder based product called Sailbrite that I could use. So I bought some from him and headed off home. The recipe called for me wetting the sail, sprinkling the stuff all over, a brisk brush with a broom and then roll the sail up wet, leave for 24hrs and unroll and wash down. It worked OK. Not quite as good a result as I was expecting, but the sails are quite old, little use but old. I was happy however. But then i thought I may as well clean the other but had no more cleaner left. I didn't want top go all the way back to Waikawa to get more so i decided to do some research on the net. What I descovered was that this product was the basic no frills ingredient to many of the oxy-bleach products out there. It is Sodium Percabonate. This is where the name Percil gets it's name from. Basically there are three similar chemicals all derived from Hydrogen Peroxide and Soda Ash. The result is Sodium Perchlorate, which is used as an oxidizer in Rocket propellant, Sodium Percarbonate, which readily desolves in Cold water and the third desolves in Hot water and is used in dishwashing detergents. As it desolves, it releases H2O2. In fact it holds as much as 15% pure oxygen.

So basically, if you want to safely wash your sails, go to the supermarket and buy some Napysan or similar Oxyaction type detergent. Do exactly as I described above and you end up with a nice safely cleaned sail that has a lovely fragrance.

 

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shanson

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:21 am

 

Thanks Wheels

 

Very timley as I have my Genoa in the car boot waiting for a clean!

 

Cheers

 

SHANE

 

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voom

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:15 am

 

nappysan is the answer

 

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The only cleaner I have found to make a visible difference to a grubby sail is TSP.Trisodium phosphate.I have no idea exactly what it is or if it is harmful to the sail.Of course you hose the hell out of the sail after using any chemical.

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