So, we've epoxied things, we've marked things, we've drilled things, and we've weighted things, so now onto stitching.
(1) Pre-cut the copper wire so you've got lots on hand before you start.
(2) Put the two sides on top of each other and thread the wire making a fairly loose loop (we overtightened a few and had to back them off). Join the ends first as the ply can be pinched together. As you work inwards, the glue blocks make stitching difficult as they keep the sides apart. Solution: the Taco Shell technique. Place something the size of beer stein between the sides so you have what looks like an 11' long Taco shell. This pushes the edges of the ply together to stitch the remaining holes. Tighten up the wires a bit so they don't fall out, but not too much.
(3) Carefully open the taco, and, voila, the thing actually starts to shape itself. We did this cautiously to make sure none of the stitches were too tight and would tear into the wood. Support with a few wood blocks to avoid stressing too much.
(4) Next, fit the rear transom. Draw the usual 1/4" line around the bottom, and mark to correspond to the holes already drilled in the aft. Do the same while you're at it for the aft topside, and drill holes as before. The next bit is pretty easy - all you have to do is stitch the aft transom to the hull. Do it loose at first then tighten up. It's far easier that way. Another hot tip here is how to shape the wire for stitching. We pushed, pulled, bent and twisted and generally made hard work of it. We could have saved hours by simply bending each piece of wire into a sort of flared out cotter pin shape (see 'hot tips'), which shoves through easily. We got it eventually - a true duh moment. Don't tighten too much as you need some play to true up later.
Worthy of mention here, and we don't know if this is the way the kits come or just an oversight, we needed to trim the deck rail on the rear transom as it wasn't flush with the edge. Easy enough, even for us.
(5) Do much the same for the front transom. The big difference is that you need two people as there's much shoving into place as this is where the real boat curves come from. Make the usual 1/4" mark off the edge and kinda roll the transom to mark the spots for the holes. Stitch one side, then the other, with a buddy forcing it into shape. More tightening will be needed later.
(6) Now onto the topsides. Same marking technique. We ignored the book here and choose to custom mark each hole by Shawn holding the topside in place while Mark penciled in the positions. We only did this for the first 3' we'd already marked. Stitched it in place (using a wood clamp at the rear transom to hold things in place), and also fixed it to the front transom.
When you fit the topside you'll notice a rather curious notch at the front. Baffled us for a minute (until we actually read the instructions - duh). This is so the topside can start out flush with the bottom, then go outside the bottom panels. While reading the recommendation to shape this a bit for a smoother curve we decided to skimp. When we started to tighten things up, it became evident that we should have done this so see below. Once again, it proves the instructions are smarter than us.
As everything gets pushed into place, the curves of the boat start to take shape - amazing, eh. Here's a picture of the front where you can see the wire stitches, and the curves pretty clearly. How they figured out the right shapes without computers back in 1962 is beyond us, though we aren't too hard to baffle as the regular reader may have noticed.
Don't bother trying to mark the holes all the way along the topsides. Mark tried and the curves will get you every time, (with about a 1/2" drift by the time you get to the rear transom). Do about 3' at a time, working from the front, align the topside and drill in situ - don't bother marking, Apply the stitches as you go, (and this is best done with two people as much holding and shoving is needed to follow the correct curve) but leave the last 9" unfixed. You need a bit of play here to apply epoxy to the transom edges, and to force everything into final alignment, After putting epoxy in the joint-to-be, whack in a couple of copper nails to hold everything in place. It took a bit of effort, but we got everything to line up pretty well, threw in the final stitches, tightened up, and patted ourselves on the back for not screwing up too much.
We contemplated putting a couple of pipe clamps on to hold things together while the epoxy cured but it wasn't necessary as the nails and stitches held everything very tightly. Looking good.
(7) Next step was to tighten things up a bit as we had more holes in the bodywork than a Fiat after a rainstorm. Anyway, automotive prejudices aside, we revisited the foreward transom and took out a number of the stitches so we could file the front notch for better lines (below a photo from the inside of the hull with Mark pointing at the notch). Easy to do with a simple rasp, takes 30 seconds, so do it when the wood is flat. This made it easier to push, shove, and mallet everything into place so we could throw in some new copper stitches (the old ones break easily so don't reuse them), really tighten everything into place (with all the right edges in alignment), and no gaping holes.
(8) You'll find a couple of rough cut pieces of wood in the kit. We wondered what the heck they were for so now we know - they're to stiffen up the boat while bulkheads etc get added (they get removed later). Easy to fit. See them in action in the photo to the right.
