Day 8: A nearly boatlike structure

Mike was already at it when I got home from work - he just could not wait for the next stage, wiring on the shear panels. He had already trimmed the extra length off the shear clamps and had drawn a line 3/8 " from the edge along the bottom inside of the shear panels. I got to pencil in a mark every 4" along said line for him to drill 1/16" holes in for the wire-up. I marked, he drilled, and we were ready to attach the shear panels (with shear clamps - see Day 4). This was not quite as easy as it sounds. It required lots of holding - pushing gently into place - balancing - swatting of flies - wiping of sweat - swearing - a trip to Ace Hardware - a minimal amount of bleeding - a couple of cold drink breaks. We finally got it right though and the wired-up boat now resembles a porcupine.
It was about 86 degrees F but oddly dry and very windy. Actually a fairly pleasant afternoon to be working. The swearing and the trip to Ace Hardware occurred when we were almost finished wiring the shear panels on and discovered we had used the last of the 4" 18-gauge copper wires. We still had about a third of the boat unwired! We looked through all of the stuff that arrived with the kit and, to our great disappointment - there was no more wire to be found!! Up to this point, everything about our 16.5 foot Mill Creek kayak-canoe hybrid kit had been absolutely dead-on perfect. All the pieces had been perfectly milled and engineered to fit together like a dream and there was just the right amount of everything. We had followed all instructions precisely and ... well, that bit about following instructions ... I guess, to be entirely honest, there had been a few maverick moments ... and we have sometimes understood the instructions only after we re-read them for the umpteenth time. Yah, okay, Chesapeake Light Craft (http://www.clcboats.com/ ) was not at fault. The directions say to cut the copper wire into 4" lengths. They also said that you acheive that result if you just cut the roll of copper wire in two places. That's what we did but we did not MEASURE to see if we were making 4" pieces that way. Upon closer examination, we discovered that they were more like 6 to 7" pieces. Thus, we ran out before we should have. So CLC, once again, is perfect and we, on the other hand, are learning yet another lesson about READING THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY! As luck would have it, ACE had the necessary 18 gauge copper wire and, after a short break, we were able to continue. And Mike only drilled through one of his fingers once! And it was on his right hand so who cares?
~the Nubbish One