: I'm working on both a Pygmy Coho and Tern (I was so impressed with my test
: paddling that I bought two) and am just about to start on the fill coats,
: and it occurred to me that I don't have a clear picture of what my goal is
: in this step, nor the best technique to use to lay the coats on.

: (I searched through old posts [and found some good information!], but not
: specifically these.)

: (a) about how much epoxy are each of these fill coats going to take? I think
: the hull saturation coat took about 12-15 oz each, and the glass coat
: about 20 oz each. What's reasonable, say, 8 oz? or does it take as much as
: the "satch" coat?

: (b) if I use a squeegee, I can easily see how the weave will get filled, but
: isn't the squeegee going to scrape down to the level of the top of the
: glass weave, and thus sanding it later would cut into the glass?

: (c) if I use a roller, but don't have enough epoxy gooped into the roller,
: will it leave a coat that's too thin? (and if too dry, even pick up epoxy
: rather than depositing it?)

: how about the cut-in-half-roller-used-as-a-squeegee method? will that both
: lay in a decent coat of epoxy and not scrape down too hard against the
: glass?

: please give me the benefit of your vast collective experience!

: thanks,

: dan

Dan, Nice choice of boats your building. You will probably get lots of opinions on applying fill coats. All methods seem to work but, my favorite is the rolled on, multiple thin coats method. It's a no brainer and you almost cant screw up. I use the West System roller covers and cut them for use with a 3" roller. Put epoxy in a plastic tray liner (walmart), roll on a thin coat and tip off with a foam brush (wood handle, gray color foam). I used no more than 4 oz. for first fill coat and 3oz. on successive coats for my Coho. It will take 4-5 fill coats to build enough to sand. This method is slow because of cure time between coats, the actual application of each coat takes less than 15 min., start to finish. The advantage to this method is the thickness of each coat is even on the entire surface which makes sanding much easier.

Works for me!!

Larry C.