: I'm finally ready to glass the hull on my kayak, but have a quick
: question. I was planning on putting a seal coat of epoxy on the
: bare wood prior to glassing to avoid the wood soaking up too
: much resin during wet out of the glass. For this method, do you
: need to let the seal coat completely cure and sand prior to
: glassing? I've never done this before, but it seems if I tried
: to lay the glass after the seal coat is tacky, it wouldn't work
: so well to get it spread out nice and flat. Any advice?

If you squeegee on a very thin coat it will seal the wood, and also soak in completely. Use very little resin. pour it on the boat in a puddle the size of a playing card and move it over an area the size of a sheet of paper. By the time you have it spread (about 2 seconds, or maybe a bit more) come back with your squeegee and completely remove the excess. If you have much left over, spread it out further, and again scrape off the excess. Then make a smaller puddle the next time. Whatever soaks in during those 2 seconds will do the job. The idea is to just coat the top of the pores, not saturate them with as much as they can hold. If the surface looks glossy and wet after a minute, squeegee off the resin which is still on the surface. Let it set up overnight.

There may be some rough areas from drips, bubbles which have burst, and raised grain. Generally these are very low and won't affect the actual glassing, but they may snag the uncoated glass fabric as you are laying it out on the boat.

A scraper does a nice job of removing these potential smags from "green" epoxy. Much neater than sandpaper, and you can just brush off the shavings before laying out the glass. You can use a sharp paint scraper, or a cabinet scraper. If you have a really sharp plane you might even try that. Any scratches you put into the finish at this stage will be filled in by the next coat of resin, so don't worry if it looks cloudy after you scrape. It turns clear again when the cloth is wet out.

If you get wetout the fabric within a day or two of applying the seal coat you'll be putting the new resin over resin which is partially cured. The new layer should bond beautifully to the older one. An if it doesn't, then the application will still be much stronger than you need.

Hope this helps.

PGJ