I was at that stage about 2 years ago and still remember how difficult it was to get the deck to take what I thought was the right shape (and keep it in that shape). The deck is actually slightly concave near the bow (on mine, at least) before it rises to its impressive bulge - this was the only way I could get the sheer panels to take shapes that would allow mating with the panels on top/bottom. It was an absolute bear of a process and required multiple iterations. I think I got the deck to take its shape only after wiring everything (deck and hull) together and using the force of all the wires to bend the panels to my will. I sprayed a lot of water on the deck (on multiple occasions) and felt like that helped it change shape over the course of multiple days. Pretty sure I ended up drilling a few new holes in the deck forms to pull the deck/sheer panels in the directions I needed, and I definitely ended up drilling something like 8 extra pairs of holes in the deck/shear panels on each side to get the force I needed to pull the panels together (without tearing through the wood). I thought I was going to break one or both shear panels since they are so thin, but they miraculously held. I think the wood duckling is probably the hardest of the wood duck family to bend given that the same shape transitions span shorter distances (I think others have stated that). Despite ensuring that the deck and hull shapes were ~matched (and wired together after the tack welds), I struggled mightily to reattach the deck to the hull after I filleted/taped and coated it with epoxy. I was barely able to pull the deck (almost) into shape - even with the aid of tons of shrink wrap tightly wound around both *and* wires almost everywhere too. I strongly recommend finding a way to ensure the deck doesn't lose its shape the way mine did (perhaps by keeping the deck wired to the hull as much as possible to maintain the deck shape). I ended up having to plane a few mm from the shear panels because I simply could not pull the epoxied deck in to meet the hull otherwise, but no one could tell just looking at it. The bevels specified in the manual are definitely overkill. My interpretation was that the bevels were not meant to touch (i.e., be perfect) but were meant to provide easy access for epoxy fillets later. My only concern with having edges beveled to 45 degrees or so was that the edges were under a lot of stress since I had to wire things together quite tightly and suffered some damage as a result, but none of that damage is visible in the finished product. I haven't heard others make comments like these about their duckling builds, so maybe I was just uniquely bad at pulling things together. Just wanted to share my experience as a (fellow?) first-time stitch-and-glue boatbuilder.

Ugh - lost my paragraphs when pasting, so here is a reformatted repost: I was at that stage about 2 years ago and still remember how difficult it was to get the deck to take what I thought was the right shape (and keep it in that shape). The deck is actually slightly concave near the bow (on mine, at least) before it rises to its impressive bulge - this was the only way I could get the sheer panels to take shapes that would allow mating with the panels on top/bottom. It was an absolute bear of a process and required multiple iterations. I think I got the deck to take its shape only after wiring everything (deck and hull) together and using the force of all the wires to bend the panels to my will. I sprayed a lot of water on the deck (on multiple occasions) and felt like that helped it change shape over the course of multiple days. Pretty sure I ended up drilling a few new holes in the deck forms to pull the deck/sheer panels in the directions I needed, and I definitely ended up drilling something like 8 extra pairs of holes in the deck/shear panels on each side to get the force I needed to pull the panels together (without tearing through the wood). I thought I was going to break one or both shear panels since they are so thin, but they miraculously held. I think the wood duckling is probably the hardest of the wood duck family to bend given that the same shape transitions span shorter distances (I think others have stated that). Despite ensuring that the deck and hull shapes were ~matched (and wired together after the tack welds), I struggled mightily to reattach the deck to the hull after I filleted/taped and coated it with epoxy. I was barely able to pull the deck (almost) into shape - even with the aid of tons of shrink wrap tightly wound around both *and* wires almost everywhere too. I strongly recommend finding a way to ensure the deck doesn't lose its shape the way mine did (perhaps by keeping the deck wired to the hull as much as possible to maintain the deck shape). I ended up having to plane a few mm from the shear panels because I simply could not pull the epoxied deck in to meet the hull otherwise, but no one could tell just looking at it. The bevels specified in the manual are definitely overkill. My interpretation was that the bevels were not meant to touch (i.e., be perfect) but were meant to provide easy access for epoxy fillets later. My only concern with having edges beveled to 45 degrees or so was that the edges were under a lot of stress since I had to wire things together quite tightly and suffered some damage as a result, but none of that damage is visible in the finished product. I haven't heard others make comments like these about their duckling builds, so maybe I was just uniquely bad at pulling things together. Just wanted to share my experience as a (fellow?) first-time stitch-and-glue boatbuilder.

Well...I guess it's just not my night in terms of formatting - sorry. The only other thing that comes to mind is that I had to drill two holes (off-center too!) In the middle of the beautiful sapele deck (about 6 inches in front of the cockpit opening) to pull it down to the deck form. They're barely visible from 3+ feet away, thankfully.

   Really appreciate the thorough response there. I feel less crazy!

I'm going to keep giving that a reread as I try to put it back together. 
 

My only other build was a kaholo so this is a whole new world of bending for me. 

"I think I got the deck to take its shape only after wiring everything (deck and hull) together". THIS helped me so much. 

Not quite done yet but wiring it to the hull suddenly made all the bits that weren't working mostly fall into place. 

Gonna take the deck back off to tweak the last couple spots. 
 

Thanks again!

Glad my rambling recollections were of help, Mike. I can definitely relate to your comment about feeling crazy since the manual didn't seem to imply that the deck shaping would be such a challenge and I hadn't seen anyone else lamenting struggles with the duckling deck on the forum. I'll look out for threads with duckling in the title since I'm still finessing my varnish, hatch, and deck rigging and haven't kicked my forum addiction. I thought I'd be tempted to paint the whole thing at this point due to the many flaws, but it's actually really beautiful since I've put a lot of effort into finishing it. The only obvious flaws, oddly enough, are a stray evergreen needle that sneaked into one of my epoxy coats and discoloration around stitch holes on the shear panels (where wood filler that I tried to color match to the holes got into the surrounding grain and left fingertip-sized blotches. Neither of these are duckling-specific, of course, but I'd recommend not getting fancy with filling holes (stick to thickened epoxy as mentioned in the manual). I'll probably paint the shear panels when the paddling season is over.