Closing Entry

I haven't journaled in a while. Things have been crazy with last week being Senior week, the beginning of my summer job, school finishing up, and I'll admit, the gorgeous warm weather we've been having. This will be my last entry for WISE class, though I may continue to blog every now and then on the process of the boat. Yes, I do intend to finish the boat, though at the rate I'm going it may take me several years. As for the wiring problem, I'm still not sure. I've loved the WISE experience, I've learned a lot about boat building, about my family, and about myself. I hope that when I look back on the spring of my senior year, I'll remember it as the semester where I tried to build a canoe, because it's been quite an adventure, and I've loved it.

Fixed one problem, caused another

Lying in bed last night I realized my wiring problem. I had been attaching the bow end of the side planks to the stern end of the bottom plank. This was such a silly mistake-that should've been the first thing to have checked. So today I took the wires out, and flipped everything around. I had attached one wire on one side, and got one all the way thorugh the other side. It was looking good..boat-like....until the wood split and the wire tore through the side. I'm not sure what to do about this.

A Beautiful Day to Stitch

Alright. So during the past week I re-glued the broken joint..and it's looking super strong. I also bought fiberglass tape which I will use to reinforce the joints once I've stitched them. This cost $7. Today I set out to stitch the boat together. 

 This is the drill that I used to put over 60 holes in the side planks. I'll put that many more in the bottom plank while wiring. I like this drill because it is not electric. It's soundless.

Here is a video of stitching the side planks together to form the bow (as requested my Mr. Huerich):

 All was well and good, until I began to wire the sides and the wire from the bow tore through. This is fixable, but not ideal.

 I can now officially say I've put my own blood into the boat: (Sorry if that's gross)

Wiring is really hard, I learned. It's difficult to manage keeping the wood in position while trying to thread a piece of wire through the plank of wood, then bend it so that it fits through the other hole but still slides through and lines up. When one loop works, the other ones don't. As I shifted the wood here and there and attempted to balance it, the loops at the front continued to tear through. I had gotten the jigsaw out temporarily to lean the wood against, and but then while wiggling things around, it crashed onto the floor. The blade is not looking so good:

The blade is replaceable, and the bottom piece can turn back, but I spent a long time trying to look for the replacement blade, and detach the old one. Finally, I set it down for the day. 

I had meant to do all my wiring and zip through it, but things kept going wrong. Hopefully it'll work better tomorrow, once I think it through a bit. 

Luke's Presentation

Luke's presentation (the sample) was amazing. I was so impressed...blown away. There is no way that I could get up in front of that many people and still be as focused and natural and just plain cool as Luke. The presentation was so full of his personality. It was his. I loved seeing how interested he was in his project and I loved that his project was something he can keep doing forever if he wants to. He handled questions extremely well, and handled feedback extremely well too. I give him so much credit for doing that in front of everyone. It was so brave.
In addition to being very inspiring, it was also terrifying. I have butterflies already for my own presentation, which isn't for 3 weeks. I'm beginning to panic. Half an hour is just so long for everyone to be focused on what I am saying. If answering a question in class at school makes me panic, I'm trying to figure out how I'll keep calm through the presentation.

Cutting Wire

Cutting wire got me thinking. As I sat on the floor of my garage in the 90 degree heat, with sawdust sticking everywhere, I couldn't help but notice a few things.
The first was that I had gotten to use my wire cutters...which doesn't sound like anything. But these were in fact my first tool ever, and the only tool that have ever belonged solely to me. My dad got them for me when I was in 8th grade, for dressmaking, in fact. The dress has been dismantled (thankfully), but I remember so clearly picking them out. In a way, that dress was one of my first experiences with building, so I'll give it at least a little credit in starting this whole project.  The wire cutters have lived on my bookshelf between books and art supplies ever since, so it was fun getting to pull them out and use them again.

The second thing I noticed is that I have an amazing knack for doing things in an unbelievably inefficient way. The plans gave a seemingly quick and easy way of cutting, where you wrap the wire around cardboard and make one clean cut...so simple. What I realized is that I'm not strong enough to bend the wire around a 3 inch piece of cardboard over a hundred times, as skinny as the wire is. So instead I sat and cut 80 six inch pieces of wire individually. As I measured and chopped away, I couldn't help but think there was an easier way to do this. Now that I sit down, afterwards, I can think of a million ways I could've done that differently, if I'd only thought of them before.

My problem is that I do this a lot...not just in my project but in other parts of my life. Applying to college was the most agonizing experience, because I drew it out forever and didn't think through my decisions fully. I make communicating with other people extremely difficult, and then spend a lot of time worrying about trying to fix problems I've caused because I could not say what I originally meant to.  I find I always end up doing things the "hard way", and I'm not so sure why.

But if I saw how cutting wire on the garage floor is tangible to real life, then maybe today's inefficiency was not a complete waste.

Not so good

Yesterday I got my dad to help me bend the side around the bottom...just to see if they matched before beginning the "stitching".  They matched quite well...until the side snapped right along the scarph joint. SNAPPED! This is...not so good.
Luckily they did snap along a seam, so fixing was not too much of an issue. I glued it back together with epoxy today...but the question now is whether it will snap again, and whether the other side will snap.
I have a theory that if you begin attaching the side to the bottom at the joint and work outward, it might not break. But this just an idea.
This also means II could not begin wiring yesterday as I had planned. It also meant I cannot wire today, because I must now wait for the glue to set.

Stitch and Glue

Both the sides and bottom have been epoxied, and cut to their exact shapes. It's starting to look like a boat! The next thing I needed to begin stitching the boat together was wire. The kind was quite particular..so I went to several places trying to find it. I eventually found it at Home Depot, and luckily, it was only 6 dollars.

So, the boat I'm building is known as a "stitch and glue", meaning that you stitch the bottom and sides together with wire, then glue with epoxy and fiberglass tape.