Maya and I made great progress on her kayak today. Strips of 1/4 inch plywood are stitched together with narrow steel wires to form the shape of the hull. We drill holes into adjacent panels, Maya threads the wire through the holes and I twist them tight, first with my fingers and then with a set of pliers. My fingertips are raw after several hundred iterations of this tedious procedure. Once the final shape has emerged we go back and adjust the wires until we get a straight keel line and just the right contours. Tomorrow we will epoxy the joints after which the wire stitches will come out. Spending time with Maya on this project is reward enough for the effort and I enjoy watching her problem solving like a true engineer. Both boys also pitched in for a few minutes during a critical step that involved passing several 15 foot strips across my router table.