> The varnish I was using said 3-5 coats. Iused 3 of course. Looks good to
> mee. good luck

The people at Epiphanes explained to me that the purpose of varnish is to make things shine, and protect from the SUN (think of lying on the beach in mexico for a week). Shine is achieved with the first contiguous layer, which on epoxy is the first coat. Protection from UV is a function of the thickness of the varnish coat (he spoke of needing a few mils of thickness) which relates to quantity used not number of coats. He suggested that a quart of varnish would be plenty on the typical 17 foot kayak.

Thinning is discussed on the can, but the discussion is designed for those users who are going over raw wood, which absorbs liquids. For going over epoxy, which does not absorb varnish, thinning is not necessary except for possibly making the stuff flow better, ie, a few drops of thinner.

So I went ahead and put one unthinned coat on my boat, and he was right it looked like new furniture. Took half a can. The rest of the can was the second coat and it looked even better (deeper). Took a few weeks to really harden, and is still not as hard as the epoxy; with a firm thumbnail you can tell that there is a fraction of an inch of thickness to it.

by the way, i hate sanding, so I used their sandfree product. He suggested that sanding is useful to remove junk in the underlying coats (dust, bugs, etc) and to make it easy to see where the varnish is as you brush it on over the last coat (brushing over unsanded varnish more than a day old is like magic - the new varnish disappears, and you can only find the wet front by touching it.) But not absolutely necessary. I cannot recommend the Epiphanes sand free varnish more highly.

hope this helps