Hi;

You might want to check my reply to the post above also. The difference between laminating and finishing resin is the addition of wax and styrene to make the finish layer cure hard (Keeps the air off of it). The shop where I got my resin gets it in 55 gallon drums (with lots of UV protectant) without wax - When they use it for laminating, they use it straight. When it's time to finish a polyester or epoxy layup, they add the wax. The wax and styrene mixture is sold separately, I found it in a few places on the Internet some months ago. These guys just added some to the resin they sold me.

As to strength, we had a thread on this some time ago, and one of the posters reported that the tech he spoke with at one epoxy mfr said that the polyester resin should actually mechanically bond better than varnish. The local company puts it on epoxy surfboards that see a lot of abuse, and they haven't seen a problem in the many years they've been doing it. I saw some OLD surfboards in their collection, and they still looked mighty good. Epoxies from the 60's were almost brown, however, apparently they couldn't make it too clear back then . . . ;-)

Best Regards, Spidey