Struggling to join WD8 deck/hull after glassing hull

Short story:

After adding epoxy/glass to the hull of my wood duckling, I'm having a really hard time re-joining the deck and hull.

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Gory details:

It was a bit of a challenge to bring the deck and hull together after stitching them together (and applying "tack welds" made of epoxy + wood flour), but I was able (with a helper) to use a putty knife to bring them together (as suggested in the manual and as shown in many videos).  I wired the cockpit area together and used a plastic film roll to secure the bow/stern.

I then did the following:

- Disassembled the deck/hull
- Re-worked a few parts of the deck/hull (removed epoxy where deck/hull panels didn't meet smoothly and re-aligned them before tacking again)
- Added fillets and fiberglass tape and cloth to the hull

I then tried to re-attach the (un-fiberglassed) deck to the hull so I could cut out the hatch but discovered that the deck and hull are even harder to bring together now.  The fit doesn't feel worse than it did with the earlier deck/hull join, but the hull feels less flexible than it was before (as one might expect given epoxy and FG) and doesn't seem to be responding well to the putty knife technique.  I expected the deck/hull fit to be *better* given that the "tack welds" hardened after I wired/taped them together last time.

I ended up re-inserting the deck form just in front of the cockpit since the deck was 1/2-3/4" away from the form when I did a test fit (to check shape).  This helped a little, but it's still a struggle to bring them together.  I'm thinking it may get easier if I leave the deck wired on for a day or two (this seemed to help when I was originally shaping the deck), but I'm concerned that it may not even be possible to bring the deck/hull together without some major rework (I've already added cracks to hull panels in two places due to extreme force I'm applying w/ putty knife).  I tried inserting the hull forms in front of the cockpit to see whether hull shape has changed, but hull seems 1+ inches too tight to allow the forms in.

Any other ideas/tales?  As a newb, I'm pretty sure I'm well over 80 hours invested at this point.  I was starting to get some good momentum and felt like I was done with the most challenging parts of the build, but this is really crushing my spirit.


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