: I have a friend who is building his first strip kayak, a Georgian Bay, by Rob
: Macks. He has glassed the hull and has a lot of strings from the edge of
: the second layer of fiberglass on the hull. He has applied one fill coat
: and wants to know if he should scrape/sand the strings off now or wait
: until he has finished with the epoxy fill coats.

If you scrape it and get it pretty smooth now, then the fill coats will cover the exposed edges of the glass cloth, sealing them, and preventing them from wicking moisture in later. If your scraper does not do the job, though, I wouldn't sand it until you've got enough resin on to fill the weave. Otherwise the sanding "dust" is hard to wipe off perfectly and you might get some trapped, affecting the finish.

If your scraping or sanding exposes any glass cloth you want to put on at least one thin coat ( preferably two) of resin to seal that exposed cloth before you varnish. The varnish alonw will not suitably seal those exposed edges of glass fabric for very long.

Paul