catspaw 2 project.....comment and stitching question

[vinegar joe]

just started my first stitch and glue project this weekend. bought the plans for catspaw 2 about three years ago, but never seemed to find the time to get going on it until now.

anyway, accomplished this weekend were the measuring/drawing of the side and floor/bottom panels and then cutting them out. based on various things that i read in this forum, i decided to use my little black and decker circular saw with an undersized plywood blade to cut out the panels. that really worked well for me (definitely a much smoother, cleaner, and accurate cut than i would have gotten with my jig saw).

question: looking down the road to the stitching steps of construction....i thought that plastic wire ties might be easier to use than wire. is there any reason not to use them?

thanks for any input. v.joe

[Roger Peterson]

Wire ties are fine except you must use a larger stitching hole for the larger diameter of the tie.

Roger

[Joe Nelson CS#35]

I too vote for the wire. I have used both in the past. Ties tend to break under the stress of folding open the hull. One roll of bailing wire will build many boats. You can also slacken the wire if necessary, a feature you cant do with ties. And yes, the holes for wire are much smaller than for wire.

[John Burritt]

Plastic ties should work fine in low-stress areas. If one breaks, replace it with a piece of wire.

[mustangermatt]

I just finished stiching with aluminium electric fence wire. I had a couple of miles of it left from when I used to have a small herd of purebred limosine cattle for breeding.

The wire is very heavy guage. What we call in the northwest "new zealand fence" wire designed for much longer runs without posts than we normally use around here.

I got it to hold April, my hunter jumper cow. That cow could clear a five foot corral panel pregnant.

Anyway, the heavy aluminium wire was plenty strong enough, and the extra diameter helps keep it from tearing through the ply even if I get a little heavy handed tightening it. But it was very difficult to work around the tight corners etc. Next time I might not be so cheap and try the plastic ties.

I am only saying this because I still have all the cuts on my hands from that heavy wire. Once they heal I will probably use the "free" stuff I aleady have again:-)

[vinegar joe]

thanks for the input.....sounds like a combination approach of plastic ties in low stress areas and bailing wire in others may be the way to go. v.joe

[Guest ncbeachbum]

Hey, I just stitched my 15.5' Moccasin tonight. I used the combo approach and used the 4" zip ties for all the stitches. I had some gaps that just woudn't quite come together so I drilled holes in between the zip ties, in the trouble spots, and wired them shut. This method worked perfectly. On a side note, the 16 gauge wire reqired about the same size hole as the 4"zip tie. I saved alot of time by zipping it up first.

[vinegar joe]

slowly moving forward on my catspaw II....presently i'm in the midst of wiring the bottom on to the sides/bow/stern. have ended up using 16 gauge wire exclusively. i like the ability to loosen and tighten things as i go along. also, it seems 8) with the bottom that after attaching the two bottom pieces together, tying and weighting it into place for a couple of days before actually wiring has made it go a bit easier (so far). would be nice to have an extra set of hands at times, but again so far no major problems (knock wood repeatedly). v.joe