All this talk about varnish reminded me of a post from awhile back about applying varnish with a rag. Well I just re-varnished the canoe this week, four coats only one with the rag. Personally I did not like the look when I applied the varnish with a rag. It went on thin I used about 1/3 as much as with a brush, with no sags. The rag left a lot of swirls and lines from the weave, very noticeable. On the upside thou it probably took also 1/3 the time to apply as with a brush, and the dry time was within an hour so I probably could have put on multiple layer of varnish each night using a rag. The other three coats I used a 100% poly general-purpose brush instead of a foam brush. The poly brush package said that it was "for maintenance and when quality does not matter" it worked great, I think better than the foam brushes.

I have had good experiences using a rag to apply varnish and stains on wood directly but on top of the perfectly smooth epoxy the rag method did not work as good as I had hoped.

Good luck varnishing.

Jason