There was a previous thread about color matching and the use of an epoxy sawdust mix to fill small gaps. I had mentioned I thought it best to seal coat first because the epoxy will stain the surrounding wood. I can only speak from my own experiences and on my first strip build, which I had used staples, I wanted it to look perfect and took a lot of time color matching mixtures and carefully filling all the staple holes and any other gaps. I only noticed the blemishes of the finished product once I was done with the kayak and actually stood back to admire my creation. The areas in which I had applied the filler mixture with a spreader, which had wetted the wood several inches around the acutual gaps and staple holes, was slightly lighter in color. It kind of looked like it had faded. I would guess that the small amount of epoxy that soaked into the wood with the putty mixture prevented the epoxy when wetting out the glass from soaking into the wood with the same consistancy.

The difference in color is not very great at all, but I noticed it and thats what counts for me.

My solution on my second strip build was to seal coat after filling as much as I could with slivers of wood, then going back over with an epoxy/sawdust/mircobaloon mixture to fill any remaining little gaps.

I also experimented with rubbing sawdust into any small voids during the seal coat. This did work but its difficult to control the color, and it took a light sanding in those areas before laying the glass

Tom