Hi All Finish Seekers;

It sounded great. In practice I did not get good results.

I got 1 gallon of resin premixed with the wax/styrene needed to achieve a hard, sandable and buffable surface. My hull was prepped with a #120 sanding and was perfect. A #320 sanding would have readied it for varnish - I decided to go with the polyester resin instead.

I mixed the resin/wax mixture for at least 10 minutes as instructed by the people who use it every day. Two 1 gal paint cans, back and forth, with lots of stirring in between. I mixed the **** out of that stuff.

I poured some mixed resin off and added the catalyst and stirred more . . . It was poured on the hull and spread with a brush, thoroughly wetting the surface. As promised, it self leveled beautifully, and looked like liquid glass when I retired for the night. A picture can be seen on my web site linked below, as it looked when I left it.

By morning, the wax had risen to the surface, the PR was hard, but it had ripples in it, almost mirroring my sweeping brush strokes that spread the resin. It had developed a texture that had to be sanded off.

With my new job & limited time, I've spent 3 weeks sanding the ripples out of the hull, and frankly I would never try this again, if only on principle. I've been told this was a freak heppening, no one has ever seen this before, but once is enough for me. That polyester resin stuff is HARD, and sanding is a real pain. It would probably make a great finish but I intend to go over it all with varnish. If the wax mixing was still incomplete or wrong proportions (as I suspect), I don't think it would buff properly. I don't intend to try.

Spidey