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Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, but it seems like a pretty obvious choice to me. You have a wing made up of airfoil sections running chordwise that taper down to their thinnest point along the trailing edge. You need something to form the trailing edge, connecting the ribs, supporting, the fabric, and maintaining the thin edge of the wing. In other words, a material that is thin and strong. You are already using wire as internal and external bracing to support the airframe and wings. Isn't wire the obvious choice as an engineering solution? If you make the wire taught, when the fabric covering is doped and shrinks, it is liable to twist the thin ends of the airfoils (and hence the wing) out of true, so you have to allow enough slack to support the shrunken fabric while taking up the tension. The result is a scalloped edge.
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