thanks for your wisdom. If I'm going to paint the hull anyway are the bubbles a problem or is it just a cosmetic side effect?

How about drilling a little hole and using the syringe to inject epoxy into the air pocket?

: Sorry my tip about maybe not hot gluing the seams was terse. I was in a
: hurry. Nothing has changed - I am still in a hurry.

: Air bubbles are a bane and once they are there, they are encased with solid
: fibreglass and never go away. There are a number of fixes and following
: responses from the learned BB will be more elaborate.

: I found the best was to deal with the few bubbles I ended up with was to cut
: the perimeter of each bubble out with a hobby knife. You end up with a
: little crater. The best way to fill this crater is to finely chopp up
: strands from a scrap of fibreglass mat with sissors. Then mix up a little
: epoxy and add enough chopped strands to make a thick mix and splodge it
: into the little crater. Let it set and sand it back. Then move on with
: your building.

: Other methods I have tried was 5 minute areldite. But that fill is too clear
: and leaves a visible patch - not acceptable to me since I was going for
: the bright wood finish. The cloth strands helps colour the epoxy fill, a
: bit like using wood powder/epoxy mix to hide the seams.

: Learning as I went along, I ended up following the wisdom of wetting out that
: is generally advocated on this board and in Nicks Book: 1 Fair everything
: prior to sheathing till it is good a finish as you can get (arguably it
: doesn't have to be mirror paint qualitity because the glass can cope with
: minor holes - but the better the better, I reckon).

: 2 Do a sealing coat of clear epoxy. This stops untreated wood sucking too
: much epoxy from under the glass. Leave it overnight

: 3 The next night lay your cloth in place after laying down your masking tape
: 'edge lines'. Tape the cloth overhangs temporarily in place (sometimes it
: doesn't have to be everywhere - I can get away with one side sometimes).
: Then sqeegie from the middle to the ends - The glass creeps and you can
: deal with the leading edge of squeegeeing if you only end up with a little
: pointy end to put back on track/move bubbles out of the way.

: 4 I haven't done this yet but use a ribbed metal roller to go over the wetted
: cloth pressing it uniformly onto the ply. I couldn't find one at the time
: and eventually inherited one from my brother when he had finished with it.
: But I haven't tried it. I conceed that by just squeegeeing you can get a
: pretty good job, but sometimes there are little raised areas that might be
: dealt with by the ribbed metal roller and this might arguably save a
: little extra random orbital sanding later on towards the end of the
: project.

: Once the cloth is wetted out, leave it for 2 hours and go around your masking
: tape inner line with your hobby knife and pull the excess overhanging
: cloth away making sure that any uncut strands don't snag the cloth off the
: boat. If this does happen say oops and use your gloved finger to poke the
: still very green cloth back in place and hope nobody saw you do it

: I helped a colleague sheathe part of his extreme seagull racer the other day
: following this recipe and like to think that after we had finished you
: couldn't really tell we had sheathed it. Cool!

: Don't fret too much about your airbubbles. If there are only a few little
: ones you can easily sort them out, especially if you are going to paint
: over them later.

: Good Luck

: Pete