Paul,

I second the recommendations for the Surform for removing excess material from the edges of the panels. I've used a scraper or a random orbital sander to remove excess material from the faces of the panels, being careful not to cut into the fiberglass tape.

I pulled a small piece of the veneer off one of my Coho panels when gluing it up in the same way as you did, by gluing one of the weighted pieces of wood to the panel without noticing it, then pulling it off too vigorously. I carefully salvaged the piece of veneer and re-glued it with epoxy under mylar and a weight. It looked good enough that I left it on the external surface of the boat and didn't switch panels around as I thought I might have to do.

I was trying to conserve epoxy when I started my Arctic Tern, since I'd run out of hardener right at the end of the Coho project by using too much in too many places. I was so conservative that three joints ended up with big air bubbles under the tape, and I had to sand down to wood and do them again. Less is more only up to a point -- after that, it's less. Mike