Hi,

I've finished putting on the 3rd coat of Flagship varnish on the deck of a S&G yak (the hull is painted).

1) No matter how careful I am, I end up seeing a few sags in the finish a few hours after application. This isn't a problem now, as I'm rubbing them out with steel wool after each coat, but what am I going to do with the sags after the 5th (and final(?) coat)? Use the steel wool, then 1000 grit, 1500, etc, or will auto body polishing compund be good enough to reduce the sags and leave a shiny surface? Would auto wax, or furniture wax bring back the shine to the areas after using steel wool?

2) I know I'm being a little stupid about this, but I'd like to have the kayak looking pristine for a week or two, to show a couple people who doubt my ability to come up with something decent. Particularly an ex-boss who has an imported Italian plastic yak, who doesn't believe I routinely catch 25lb stripers (bass), who doesn't believe that I'm not coming back to work for him, etc. etc. (new job in a new field begins on 6/19 for me).

3) I tried the archives, but that was a waste as I spent several hours reading numerous interesting posts from the past and every link attached (God, Joe Greely does some beautiful work!).

4) FWIW, I've bveen using foam brushes, varnish thinned about 10%, and most (but not all) of the sags seem to be on the deck near the coaming (Guess I need to have less varnish on the brush in that area). I was thinking about no thinner for the last coat.

Thanks for any advice about the varnish.

John