LM 18 Summerville, SC

[narfi]

This is my approach now and it seems to be working pretty well,

Brush or pour on straight epoxy and squeegy around with a bondo scraper in atleast 4 directions to fill all the little holes, then using the same scraper remove as much epoxy as possible (moving it to the next section)
When done with that the surface should be wet with epoxy, but no real build up as you have scraped it all off, but the holes and low spots in the weave are filled.
Give it a few minutes or however long at your temperatures till it starts to gel slightly, then mix up your fairing mix as thick as you like (cake frosting as mentioned above works well) and put it on a 18x18 inch board as thin as it will spread out, this gives you more time to work as its not heating itself and curing too fast from thermal runaway. Using your spreader you can cut as much off your board as you go and spread a decent amount on, also scraping all 4 directions to fill spots, and then scraping some off but leaving it as thick as you feel needed for filling lows. The pure epoxy underneath will mix a little with it, so the bottom is runnier, and the top thicker which lets it run into the tiny areas better while still being thick and non sagging on top.

I reuse the board, just sand it smooth after it cures before the next use.

Lots of words.... hope it made sense.

[Aedodd21]

That interesting, I'll have to try that. What I've done on the bow section is I sanded the glass to get some of the overlaps out from the tape and the sheets and knocked the surface/binder threads down until I can see some of the weave. Then I went in with a pretty thick but still runny coat. Then I sanded on the known high spots from the overlap areas until I get them back to close to the weave using a DA and longboard for straight sections. Then I came back with a slightly thinner coat and used those highs as a guide and lightly screet the thin stuff into the remaining lows. Seems to be working pretty well. I'm thinking the back/bottom 2/3 are the most important to get perfect as that will be the planning surface, the front/bottom 1/3 will be less important and the sides I will just get smooth so it looks good in paint.