So, I have progressed on the Sea Kayaker Cunningham S&G I was talking about a couple weeks ago, and have the four hull panels wired together in the cradles. Everything is looking good, true and fair except for a small concave area on the keel line just astern of the midships temporary bulkhead. Right about under where thighs will be. I suppose this was caused by taking a bit too much off during planing the edges of the panels, or maybe my lofting wasn't accurate in that area.

The concave area is about a foot long, and "dips" upward (I wired the panels in the cradels right side up) from the rest of the keel by about 1/4-1/2 inch. Looks like about a 16th to an eigth inch gap in the panels there.

Since everything else is wired up tight, my instinct is to try to shim this area fair with the rest of the hull with a long wedge or series of shorter wedges which would then be trimmed flush and filled with thickened epoxy.

Or should I unwire and try to plane or sand the adjacent areas out a bit and pull it back together? I am afraid that might make it worse. I don't think it will affect the paddling much if I leave it alone. I could probably fair it out from the outside once I lay wear strips on the hull.

What does the collective say?

BTW, I had trouble finding 18gauge copper wire around here. I did find a 270 foot spool of .22 caliber (?) steel floral wire for ~$3 at a hobby shop, and it has just worked great so far. In higher stress areas at bow and stern, I had to double and sometimes triple fold the wire, but no problem, there's plenty of it.