Dec 5. Stitching

Well, we've done all that we can do prior to stitching, so we might as well stop procrastinating and get to work. 

Oh, one thing I was glad we did, but we have no pictures of is that we clamped the sides together and shaved all the edges even with each other. Some edges were as much as a quarter inch off, and that would have caused asymmetry problems later. Glad we checked that. It's not in the instructions to do so. 

Here's Ken under the boat doing the hard work of poking wires through the seems for me to twist up. Here we are nearing completion at the stern (start by sewing the stem together and then wedging the bottom in). It's not easy. You have to bend the sides around the bottom as you go. It's not easy. I meant to say that twice. We had to use a Spanish windlass (look it up) to get the sides in. A couple more twists every few stitches. You can see by the above picture that the sides are straight up and down at this point. No flare. And the bottom is flat. Like a hat box. This I didn't expect, and it works, but I was worried the shape would not work out. 

The stitching process took 5 hours, at the end of which I was saying to Ken: "I'm not sure this is a very efficient process. I don't think I like it."

Five minutes later, after just the two of us rolled the boat over its side to right side up, I placed the stem and stern on a couple of low benches and when we pressed down in the center of the boat with about 20# of pressure, the thing popped open like a flower to the most beautiful shape. Boy was I wrong. This is an awesome method. In less than a week we had a basic boat shape. 

Here and above you can see the spreaders we placed in their proper locations. We cut them prior to beginning the stitching. They're in the plans. The spreaders stay there until the shape is solidified by installation of the seats. 

Transom ready to install. 

Transom wired in. This was tougher than it looks. The trick to get it to work easily is to screw a couple small sticks on the sides vertical (see, in the picture they are sticking up) and use a long clamp to pull the tops together while the sticks keep the sides straight. Otherwise the sides arc and bend. Impossible to wire. 

Notice that my bevels on the transom are not exactly correct. Not to worry: the fillet will take care of that.