Mary Shafer wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 21:41:47 -0400, (Peter Stickney)
wrote:

Well, there's canvas and then there's canvas. The first two dictionary
entries that pop up for me read as follows:

2) a) A coarse cloth so woven as to form regular meshes for working
with the needle, as in tapestry, or worsted work.

I needlepoint (do canvas work) and it's certainly not what you'd use
to cover a wing. The holes are bigger than the warp and weft threads.

Canvas, as in the fabric used in sails, is tabby weave, like duck. It
can be made from cotton, hemp, linen, ramie, or other fibers. The
weight and the closeness of the weave varies.

So, at a glance, Irish Linen could, in fact, be considered a type of
canvas, or, perhaps a cotton twill. IIRC, the Wrights used a Sateen,
which is a cotton with a treated surface.

Nope. Sateen is a weave, just like twill. It's not treated and it's
not necessarily cotton. Rather, it has floating threads on the
surface, just like satin. In fact, the difference between sateen and
satin is whether it's the warp threads or the woof threads that float.

Anyway, sateen can be made from any fiber, although some of them
aren't as practical as others. So can twill and satin, for that
matter.

I had a vague memory that the 1903 Flyer was covered with cotton muslin.
So I googled around and discovered that while the 1900-1902 gliders were
indeed covered in "French sateen", the 1903 Flyer was covered in "Pride
of the West" brand muslin, a very fine weave commonly used for
petticoats.

Once they went into series production, they used waterproofed cotton
cloth (rubberized) for the wing coverings.

-Marc

--
Marc Reeve
actual email address after removal of 4s & spaces is
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