. Drew's Boats: Stitching It All Together

Stitching the planks together

Now it’s time to stitch the planks together and finally make all of the hard work in to some 3D, hopefully it will look something like a boat. I had already cut about 180 copper wires about 6” (15cm) long and folded all of them in half. Then I placed the two bottom planks together and started to stitch. I feed the copper wire through the two holes that lined up along the bottom of the plank then twisted them a bit so they would not come undone. Once I had done almost the full length of the hull I opened it up. Then I took the next plank and placed it in place and started to drill holes as they lined up. I would drill 2 – 3 holes then stitch them in place. Then move along to the next couple of holes and drill some more and stitch them in place. I repeated this process working from the center out to the ends. I had to stop about 40cm before the end of the boat because the hull was taking up too much shape making it very awkward.

I put all of the planks in place and stitched them as I went. It currently looks nothing like a boat. In fact when I look at the ends I wonder how it is ever going to line up at the ends. It was the end of a long night drilling and stitching and I had one try at pulling the end together but it did not want to go so I gave up for the night. Sometimes you are better off stopping for the night and going back inside to think it over and come up with a better strategy instead of pushing on and breaking something. In this case the plywood was making all sorts of creaking and cracking so it was time to stop.