: Will the epoxy
: make it harder to make pencil marks on the wood and worse, make it harder
: to cut it? I would think it would dull my jigsaw blade faster.

A thin coat of resin probably won't affect the jigsaw blade significantly. What does the dulling is the glass fabric. Epoxy resin alone is pretty soft. If your blade is moving at a high speed it may get warm from friction and melt some of the epoxy, gumming up the blade.

since the resin soaks into the wood's pores and fibers and bonds them together, you may get a smoother cut, with less tearout on the edge. Try a stripe or two of resin on a scrap and see if this works for you. Instead of the teeth of the blade snagging and lifting up wood fibers, the bonding action may hold the fibers in place and allow the blade to slice them more smoothly. The resin-reinforced wood may be a bit more resistant to having the holes ripped out should you go overboard in twisting the wires when you stitch things, too. When cutting scarfs the resin reinforced wood should take a sharper edge. The resin should help support that fine edge. When you use epoxy to glue the scarf joints you won't get any change in color from local absorbtion of resin just around the joint. The whole panel is already the same color from ALL of it absorbing resin. any excess that squezes from the joint can be removed by scraping or sanding -- and you can remove any runs that occurred elsewhere on the panels at this time, too.

For marking with a pencil -- use both ends of the pencil. First use the eraser to scuff the area a bit, then draw your line in the area you've already erased. I'm not sure the eraser is really abrasive enough to actually scuff the resin. I think you end up rubbing some rubber from the eraser onto the area, and that yields enough "tooth" for the pencil to write or draw lines.

I wouldn't worry about the time you apply the resin. If you go to glass the hull several days, or several months later (or more) you'll certainly be sanding the taped seams, so why not do the panel areas between them at the same time? You'll use another couple pieces of sandpaper, and it will add an hour to your time at most. In exchange, you get a really well cured layer that will prevent outgassing, and be very smooth.

hope this helps

PGJ