Reading what both Kym and Dade have posted, I gather that the fit issue with the deck and the hull seems to be caused by the spreaders.

SO can either of you pinpoint which are causing the problem. If it is one or two of them can they jut be eliminated? I rememer the fit problem on the North Carolina which was remedied by using a home-made spreader, maybe elimination will resolve the problem on the Kongo.

Steve,
As you've noticed, I cut my hull at waterline, so the spreaders are only about a third of their depth and are only able to position in the top locating hole. Counting from the front (bottom of the pic), #'s 4,5,6 & 7 were shortened. On my kit, #4 only needed the the locator pins cut down but the rest needed some minor shaving and sanding to bring the sides in to meet the deck. In the end, I didn't do 6 & 7 enough and there was a very minor gap left which I filled. I also added 2 braces of my own to prevent lateral movement.
As Dade said, things are going to be trickier with a full hull as the spreaders will have 4 locators plus the hassle of making sure the keel mates properly.
Hope this helps.

I forgot to mention, the 4 center spreaders were not glued in permanently until the surgery was completed.

On my end, I had the spreaders sanded down to where they could slide in and out of their holes without any friction as I knew that even a small bit of friction would cause issues. So the mounting pins were sanded smooth and I got everything lined up. Keeping the keel seam together was a major issue, but the hull top looked pretty nice. I didn't want to bring it in further to get rid of the deck gap, though, because then it would flex at the other side to make the keel halves even harder to mate.

So, knowing that I would be using the wood deck anyway and knowing that puttying plank detail wouldn't be as much of an issue, I lived with the gap at the top of the deck and made sure the keel seam was tight. The gluing area at the bow and stern is good enough, though, that you could perhaps remove the outermost three spreaders on each end and still get a good fit, but I don't know if that will work or not.

looks like I'll be spending a wee bit of time dryfitting and adjusting to get the hull deck situation set up right. As you pointed out Dade, using the wooden deck gives one less concern about filling and sanding. I guess beng a lurker here is paying off, you guys will have most of the bugs found and I can correct a lot of things before I even start my kit like adusting the "pagoda poles" and of course getting the lower half of the ship squared away.

I guess I really am the lucky one here, the hull fits nicely although I did have to use some pressure to really push those "support beams" in. But once they where in the hull didn't have to be bent or forced and went together with no problems. Same with the deck fitting, just nice and snug, but then again I'm just a beginner when it comes to ships and largely tend to focus on just getting the thing together
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You should however pay close attention to the area where the center deck panel slots into the flight deck since there is a rather large gap there. I don't know if the PE flight deck supplied in the deluxe set solves this problem but otherwise you'll be bringing out the filler for that one! Also the bridge structure is a bit tricky, especially the pole construction, but sanding them down should solve the problem and they should slide right in there.

And as a request from me: I don't have a high tech camera but I'll try and post some pictures of my progress so far, I hope that some of you more experienced modellers (Dade and Kym in particular, since they both dealt with the Kongo) can give me some tips on how to improve my work since I'm still a beginner and really want to lift my modelling skills to a higher level.

Hope you guys can help, and keep on lurking , it might save a lot of time and frustration.

Happy modelling!