Step 1: Cutting the panels and stitching

After you buy the the plywood and lumber, find a clean and big enough place to start work. I didn't have any closed space, so I had to build the boat in the front yard. This exposes your work to dust, insects, etc. which is most painful during the painting and finishing phases. The worst part however, was that the summer sun allowed me to work only a few hours before sunset. Epoxy is sensitive to ultraviolet light (more on this later), so I had to cover the boat most of the day to protect it from sunlight once glassing had begun. My experience with plywood and lumber can be helpful before you go on, especially if you reside in Turkey.

	This sample plan sheet shows the bottom and side plane dimensions of the D4 dinghy. A little planning is necessary before you start transferring these lines onto plywood in order to minimize the amount of waste. In some plans, the designer has already done this for you. The cutting plans are given for standard plywood dimensions though, and are not of much help if your plywood sheets have different dimensions (as was the case in my project)
	You start by inscribing your plans on plywood. This is a step which requires a lot of attention (not looking very happy in this picture). Straight lines are easy to draw. For the side and bottom panels which have curved edges, it is best to use a "batten"; a long and thin wooden stick which can easily be bent to follow the shape of the curve. Finding an assistant may ease your task while drawing long curves. Fortunately, the side and bottom panels are symmetric which eases the task somewhat. The next step will be to cut the plywood panels.
	Here I am using a jigsaw to cut the panels. People usually prefer a circular saw for this task, unless the curves of the panels are very tight. I don't have a circular saw, and had absolutely no trouble with the jigsaw. If you need to saw much thicker plywood, or if you are cutting lumber (e.g., for the gunwales, mast or spars) a circular saw might be more appropriate.
	One of the bulkheads cut.While cutting plywood, using jigsaw blades made for cutting metal proved to be much better than using blades suited to lumber because lumber blades have fewer teeth per unit length and tend to damage the edges of the thin plywood..
	After cutting the panels, the next step is to stitch the hull. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this step (had to do it alone). This picture and the next one show the stitched hull with the seat supports (which serve as athwartship bulkheads in small boats) temporarily in place. The bulkheads have not been glued yet, but the inward pressure of the side panels help keep them in place. The transom and the bow transom have also been stitched along with the bottom and side panels.
	I have carried out the stitching procedure as described in Devlin's book. You start with the bottom panels, stitch them together along the bottom seam, open them like a book, and stitch the side panels to the bottom panels. The two transoms are also stitched in this step. Checking your work with the previously cut bulkheads assures that the angles at the seams are correct. Also, make absolutely sure that dimensions along the two diagonals of the boat (from each side of the transom to the bow) are the same before starting glue work.
	Close-up view of the stitches. I have used easily available copper wire for the stitches. You don't need a tight fit at the seams. Gaps up to 1 cm (OK, maybe even more, but try not to exaggerate) are acceptable because the epoxy putty will fill those gaps. Distance between stitches is not very critical. I put a stitch at every 15 cm in low stress areas of the hull going down to about every 5 cm in high stress areas like the bow and transom ends of the panels.
	Time has come to start the glue work. Before the seams are glued, you have to do two things. The first is to secure the geometry of the stitched hull. I cut dummy bulkheads from 2 cm thick particleboard to use as spreaders and temporarily screwed them in place (pictures of this later). The second is to pull out the stitches. For a small boat, you can place small epoxy fillets between the stitches to hold the hull together and pull the wires out once these cure. Here you see a close-up of the fillets.
	These fillets serve very much like the point welds to hold the pieces together in a welding task. Here, you see a close-up of the transom fillets after they have cured and the stitches pulled out. We shall now cover the entire seam (over the point fillets) with epoxy fillet. Some people argue that the stitches may be left in place. In general, it is best to pull them out if you are using metal wire stitches. If you are using say, nylon cable straps as stitches, I think they can be left there and filleted over.