: As glassing time approaches, I wonder if I can get supplies at chain stores
: like Home Depot or Menards or.....---Please advise - Scott E. -Thanks

If you have the need to spend more money you can obtain the required items from most automotive repair stores. However, they generally deal with smaller quantities so your costs will be astronomical. Also, i suspect that with such high prices they have little turnover, so the products may be a bit old. The fiberglass cloth is generally sold precut in packages of 1 or 3 yards, so expect to make a lot of overlapping seams. check the label on your resin carefully. Polyester is used a lot for automotive "fiberglass" items so there will be a lot more of that around than epoxy.

I have also seen epoxy resin and glass cloth at the automotive departments in Wal-mart. Again, not a lot on the shelf, and at a rather steep price. The Home Depot near me has epoxy resin. The Ace Hardware near me has an aisle for RV and boating stuff, and they have some cloth and resins -- polyester and epoxy

Large boating stores tend to have these items on hand.

There are a lot of advantages to buying by mailorder or over the net. Besides better prices you have a greater variety of materials available. Checking through the archives you'll find a few slams of one supplier or another, but mostly these are isolated cases. The worst offender I can remember hearing of seems to have gotten a lot of bad publicity for a short time, and they took it to heart, cleaning up their act and greatly improving their service and their products.

An e-mail to a supplier asking for a quote on a list of your needs should give you a firm cost, including shipping. Get a money order for the exact amount and use the postal system to get that to them. Then, if they screw up, you can complain of mail fraud -- something you can't do if you send your order through the net and they deliver by UPS -- or if you buy over the counter.

For mailorder as well as over-the-counter retail:

If you have a gold or platinum credit card and use it when placing your order the credit card company will add to the guarantees offered by the supplier and manufacturer. If you use any credit card you can call the credit card company to complain -- and stop payment -- if your materials are defective or not as advertised and the supplier won't make it right for you.

Hope this helps.

PGJ