Winding the hull

With the hull wired together, I then leveled it and made sure it was aligned along it's length (so-called "winding" the hull). As you can see in the picture, the ground isn't level, and I doubt the sawhorses are exactly the same height either. It's not necessary, however, to have level sawhorses or level ground to properly align the boat. It's enough simply to suspend it level from the sawhorses. To do that, I screwed two pairs of upright sticks to the sawhorses and then clamped the boat to those sticks so that it was level.

Next, I checked for alignment along the lenth with the aide of long sticks across the hull about 1/3 and 2/3 along its length. Note that the front stick and the rear stick are aligned, which means that the front 1/3 and the back 1/3 of the boat are aligned. In a mis-aligned boat, those sticks would not be parallel with one another. In this photo, it looks like the sticks are tilted down to the left, but they're actually level according to the spendy Tennessee Mason's level that I bought at an estate sale for $2. I'm a cheap bastard.

This shot was taken before I squared up the bow. It was twisted slightly out of vertical, so I loosened the stitches a little, gave it a twist so it was vertical, and re-tightened the stitches. Next, with the boat aligned and level and the bow and stern vertical, I'll "fair" the hull - which means I'll sight along the keel and chines checking for dips, bulges, flat spots, etc.