Tightening the Stiches

All stitched together

Now that I had it all in shape I had to pull of the stiches tight. Up until now I had only been putting 3-4 turns on the wire to hold it in place while I pulled it together. For this next step I had to turn the boat over. I set up some saw horses and made sure they were level and square so the hull had every chance of pulling up square ad even. While the hull was close to the right shape it was still very flexible and it would make all sorts of strange noises if you moved or bumped it. Now I had to put more twists on to the wires so that would take up its final shape. I also had to close up all of the gaps so that the epoxy would not leak through when it came time to glue it together.

This step took a lot longer than I had thought it would. The first reason was the copper wire was thinner than what was really meant for the job, so as I put more twist on it the wire would break and I would have to pull it out and put a new one in. This happened more time than I care to remember and was a bit frustrating. The worst part was right at the end of the boat where there was not much room to get in and work. The second reason this step took so long was because you had to make sure that you were happy with shape and that everything was symmetrical so I spent a lot of time making sure it was just right. Of course the more I fiddled the more I would brake stitches and so on and on it went.

After a lot of fiddling and a lot of broken stitches I was finally happy with the shape so I very carefully turned it back over ready for the next step.

It's a canoe - Sasafras 16