My plan is to put a 3/4" mahogany veneer accent strip along the chine on my Kipawa S&G and am about ready to get at it, so I did some experimenting. I put down two pieces of iron on veneer and glued a non iron on piece with wood glue onto a piece of scrap okoume. I sanded the edges of one of the iron on pieces and the glued piece to get the edges as flush as I could without getting frayed edges or the white glue backing showing.

Then I glassed over them with 5 oz from Raka. Disappointing results. The non sanded piece, as expected, has a bubble line along each edge. One side of each of the sanded pieces was very good and one had some bubbles. It's possible that using wood glue rather than epoxy on the non iron on veneer contributed to the bubbles on that piece.

So it's apparent that the margin for error in sanding the veneers is very very small. Too little and you get bubbles. Too much and you get a bad edge. Not good news when you have 66 feet of edge to sand (16.5 foot canoe, veneer with two edges on both sides).

My question is, are such small bubbles a structural problem or just unsightly? Do they provide a toehold for future delamination?

The other option is to glass and then on the first fill coat, when it is beginning to set, lay down a non glue backed strip. It would then take 3 or 4 fill coats to get a smooth edge of epoxy built up and it would probably have a bigger bump than if it were under the glass.

Any thoughts?

Oh, I also did a sample of the lettering that I had printed on a transparency at Kinkos and it is perfect. You can't even see the edge of the plastic under the glass. Maybe with fill coats, but it looks good. Finally - somthing easy that works well the first time!!!!!!!!! :-)

Patsy