Check out this thread. http://www.clcboats.com/forum/clcforum/thread/8585.html

Home Depot (Ontario, Can.) sells a 50m roll of 20ga copper wire in the picture hanging aisle.The brand name is HTR (Hardware to Retail)

The 20ga is thinner than 18ga but I've made three kayaks using it with no problems at all plus your holes can be smaller.

http://www.royalinternational.com/eng_cdn/htr.asp

When I ran out of wire, I finally found some at a craft store. It was 20ga. which is slightly smaller.

Ah Ha... MIG welding wire, it's everywhere! 

Rossco - where in BC are you, and what are you building? I'm on Salt Spring Island.

I used some "iron" wire on my first (non CLC) project which is (still) in the finishing stages. I'm not sure of the gauge, but it was probably around 16 or 18. I'm sure it was a lot stronger and stiffer than copper, which was good where I needed a lot of tension for some of the bends, probably because it wasn't Okoume, which I will use for all future projects... except I do have some HydroTek for one project.

Keith (aka PocketShip, likely to be my #4 project)

Surrey

Umm... what are you building?

  you can get 18's copper wire from Home Hardware.  all the big box stores only sell the thinner copper wire.  hope tis helps.

PocketShip, Wood Duck 10. Also trying my hand at blogging the project.

http://woodduck10kayakbuild.blogspot.com/ 

I ran out of copper (poor materials management by me)  and used aviation safety wire on my Dory, which worked fine. -JB

Thanks to everyone. Back on track.

When I ran out of wire, I went to HD and the salesperson found some "thermostat wire', which was insulated and double, like a very thin lamp cord. It was 18 gauge, and very easy to split & strip.

I didn't really use the wire for mine except minimally.  I had so much extra it's been used for about 8 other projects.

The spacing of the wire doesn't need to be quite as close as CLC recommends so perhaps you can just spread it out a bit.  As long as you have a couple pieces per panel joint it's really not that hard to get things lined up.

FrankP

Update..... don't use the MIG wire, steel or aluminum, it's too brittle. The "craft" copper 20 gauge wire at HD is fine. 165' for 9 bucks ?;^)

I've used steel wire a couple of times(Cable ties once but the hull was painted).  I puchased a roll of 1.25mm steel wire for a fraction of the price of copper and yes it does succumb to mechanical fatigue much quicker than copper and does have a tendency to draw more blood and stitche must be removed but it is still a viable alternative if you don't readily have acces to copper or are on a really tight budget.

I finished stitching a Pax20 hull on the weekend and quickly ran out of the expensive copper wire. A quick dash to my local handyman store had me sorted out with enough steel wire fo 3 20ft hulls for half the price of the copper that only got me 1/3 through the Pax20.

I did however, replace some of the initial copper stitches with steel so that i had copper for the ends which are tight. the steel is no where as forgiving as the copper.