Drill with a drill bit the same size as wire size, cutters, pliers, twister, roll of wire tie wire--the only tools needed to put the stitch in "stitch and glue" type constructed boats. The wire is cut into about 6-inch lengths, and is all that is needed to hold plywood panels in shape while they are being fiber glassed and epoxied together. At least that is what I read.

Drill a hole in each plywood panel to be joined together, directly opposite each other.

Feed cut wire from the opposite side through holes drilled in plywood. You may need to use the pliers to pull the wire fully through.

Twist the wire ends together. The pliers are helpful here too.

Use the twister to snug the plywood panels up together. The hooked arm spins in the handle as you rotate your wrist.

Tie wire twisted up nice and snug.

Excess wire is snipped off. This step is helpful as the excess wire can get in the way of applying epoxy putty in the seams between the panels.

You will want to start off with longer wires in the bow where the bend is greatest, so that you can thread them easily. You can cut them short later.

The starboard bilge is "tied" on. At the extreme middle left you can see a blue zip tie joining the tip of the bottom to the tip of Bulkhead 4. See if you can see the piece of string running from the center of the bow straight up to the tip of Bulkhead 4. I wanted to see if the bilge panel was straight along the centerline of the boat. If it went over center, the other bilge panel would not fit. It seems that between Bulkhead 4 and Temporary form 2, the starboard bilge panel wants to "lean" to the other side of center, I guess because of the stresses involved in trying to bend the panel around the forms.

To bring the edges of the upper bow bilge sections just to the centerline of the boat, a belt sander was employed.

I can now start threading the port bow bilge section. I had to leave it undone for fitting purposes.

I temporarily fastened the tip of the bilge panel with a screw into the bottom of the stem so that I could get all of the wire ties in place.

To get the panels properly positioned, I had to loosen the tension on some of the ties, and tighten other ties. However, these wire ties can take only so much twisting before they snap. The best fit I could get still left a half-inch gap between the panels at the tip of the bottom. There was no way I could draw the bow bilge in fully against Bulkhead 4 with just the wire ties.

I then came up with the idea of using 1/4-inch threaded rod through both bilge panels with washers and nuts to bring the panels to their final position.

As you can see, the panels were drawn easily together with the nuts on the threaded rod for a great fit.

I used the threaded rod technique near the stem with equally successful results.

Using the rod allowed me to take out a good number of wire ties. Its funny how I started with the bow section thinking, "How in the heck am I going to get this thing to fit," to, "Hey, this boat is starting to look pretty nice!"