A long time ago I built a plywood kayak and negelected to varnish the insides of the hatch covers. They clouded (on the inside) after a couple years where the varnished parts didn't. The hatch covers spent some time off the boat and in direct sunlight.

A friend of ours experienced extreme clouding to the point she sanded off the cloth down to bare wood on the deck and recovered it. (She rejected our advice to paint it). The clouding in this case may have been due to an incompaibility between the epoxy and the cloth. She used West System the first time and got her cloth at a different supply house. She used System 3 clearcoat and regular resin for the recovering. She also got her cloth from System 3 and it is still clear 2 years later.

I know some epoxies (like system 3 clearcoat) have some limited UV protection built in. Could this explain why yours didn't cloud?

> Starting this spring I have been building some Greenland paddles.
> After I coat them with epoxy, I use the remaining epoxy and coat my
> garden tool handles. They have been baking in the summer sun every
> day and there's no clouding.

> I have never seen this clouding that I hear about and worry about
> when I try out a new un-varnished boat. Has anyone experienced this?
> I've been using Raka epoxy (this time). Maby this whole clouding issue
> is a big myth. I have never experienced it. I use epoxy alone on the
> Greenland paddles and the epoxy never clouds and some of them are
> three years old.