Steve

Many thanks. Dave and I settled on 24 guage steel wire, some 24 gauge copper wire, and some 18 gauge copper if it's needed for serious strength. I drilled a pile of holes using a drill just bigger then 24 gauge, chucked in a Dremel tool. I'm planning on no wires being lefy in the yaks, leaving a gap in the fillet fill to get all wires out. Also, we've experimented on angles to allow a inside valley but a tight outside seam. Tomorrow will be a very busy day...

: I think the only reason people use copper wire for S&G is because they leave
: part of the wire in the boat. If they adhere the panels by taping the
: inside, the wire is trapped. If the wire was ferrous it would interfere
: with a compass. I have always felt this was not a good way to build an S&G
: kayak.

: If you put thickened epoxy in the outside facets in between the panels it
: will hold the hull together nicely. You have to fill these openings
: eventually anyway. Then you can pull all the wires out.

: I measured the wire supplied by Pygmy and it comes out to about 21 gauge
: (.033") so 22 gauge steel wire should be OK. I think I bought 2
: blister pak rolls of 22 gauge wire at Home Dept last time and it lasted me
: the whole boat. I like to waste a lot of wire. The 22 gauge steel is
: pretty good at pulling the panels together without breaking, but sometimes
: you will snap a wire and have to reinstall it.

: I do not recommend using anything less than a 1/16' drill bit to drill the
: holes. Thats what is recommended by Pygmy. I break about 6 or 8 bits
: during the construction of a boat. The 1/16" ones are cheaper and
: easily available at Home Depot. This hole size seems about perfect. Any
: smaller and you will have more trouble and spend more time inserting the
: wire into the holes, and you will end up breaking more bits which have to
: be more expensive to replace.

: It will look ugly until you sand it, but then you will hardly notice the
: holes. For the Pygmy way, the holes get filled in by the saturation coat
: of epoxy. For the outside seams the epoxy is thickened with wood filler
: which gives it strength and a nice brown color.

: Good luck. It looks like building the S&G Night Heron is a lot of fun.

: Regards,
: Steve Pituch