time to assemble hull and sides

So İ started with the bottom which layed nicely on the cradle. İ started stiching with copper wire but ended up switching pretty rapidly to zip ties. İ found plastic zip ties to be much easier to work with and İ used 5mm wide ones which have great strentgh and do not need a much bigger hole to fit in than the 12' copper wire. My only concern is that, no matter what İ did, İ could not get the hull panel to really join after frame 53.5 The tips came together nicely but İ still had an open strip of about 1/4 of an inch starting after frame 53,5. Will see what İ do about that. However, even with this gap, the hull still conformed the the underneath hull support, so İ guess İ am not too far out.

Here is a picture of the hull before stiching, pre loaded with all copper wire. (the only copper wire İ found around here was 2.5 mm and with a blue plastic sleeve)

Then came time for the side panels....That was some heavy work. Literally ! The side panels are heavy and difficult to carry around in a tight space especially with no one around to help. So İ used the kind of strips you use to fasten your surfboard on your car rack to support the panel while İ started stiching. İ also use a little trick wich İ took from one of the builders blogs (sorry, can't remember who) and screwed little pieces of leftover plywood on the outer bottom edge of the hull and on the inner bottom edge of the panel İ wanted to stich. Only 4 small pieces across the whole lenght of the boat, across the hull and across the side panel

Those little blocks on the hull made sure that the side panels did not slide in and were kept on the edge of the bottom hull.

The ones on the side panels made sure that the panel did not drop down, as it was happening constently before.

After about 20 minutes fighting with this heavy panel, İ started drilling holes across the bottom hull, evenly spaced at about 6 inches and roughly at about 1/2 inch from the edges. Then İ drilled the first 3 matching holes on the side panel, layed down and started stiching. The first stiches were pretty difficult and heavy, but by frame 53.5 they became much easier as the hull started to acquire its natural form. From mid boat to transom, it was a piece of cake. The panels layup perfectly and İ manage to finish with a pretty clean edge-to-edge sewing (bottom edge with panel edge) without the help of the cutted pvc section which İ was ready to use.

Here are 2 pictures of the stiching from inside the hull, and from beneath. Note how the bottom hull ended up stiffening and raising from the cradle suports. Will definitely solve that before fileting.

İ was in a groove after stiching the first panel, so İ went straight to the other panel which went even smoothier. After a couple of hours, İ had a hull !

The picture below show the hull stiched together but still supported with a long red tape. İ could not resist the tempation and through in a few frames just to give it a more "boaty" look ! This building process is wonderful !

As a note, what really surprised me is how the side panels , once stiched, assumed pretty much by themselves the correct position and angle... No need to support them. As a matter of fact İ supported them on the sides after stiching since İ was afraid that if İ did not, everything might fall apart. Well to my surprise, once İ gently released the supports, the panels opened up nicely and stopped. The width at transom was exactly the width of frame 214 ! How about that...!

Then İ just stiched frame 214. No issue, just a tiny fairing on one starboard side. İ guess that is a consequence of not getting the kit from Tim ! But here in Turkey, it woud have been impossible + cutting is actually a lot of fun too !