: I have some areas that are very milky and I suspect that they are caused by
: bubbles from the original layup. I suppose that the only way to deal with
: those would be to sand right down to the wood and start over?

I suspect you are right about the milky area, If you put a saturation coat of epoxy on the wood prior to fiberglassing it, you should be able to carfully remove it and leave the wood untouched. Other wise You will have to sand to the wood, this will likely result a slight discolouration if you only replace patches. It will however be much better than the milky appearance.

There is a chance that the milky area, is infact where you have sanded down not the epoxy? Was it there before you started sanding? If not then you should be able to cover it with the next layer of epoxy, and it should dissapear. however that section of the kayak will be weaker.

This is a problem I have no first hand experince with, so this is just my feeling.

: To continue this one step further do you think that it is a good idea to add
: a fill coat or two before laying a second layer of glass (to make
: feathering easier?

As far a feathering goes I think you will be further ahead by not puting a second fill coat on, prior to the second layer of glass.. the reason I say this is the second layer will be closer to the first, and you will have less of a step to feather in.

There is a 'tape' trick for keeping the edge clean. I never completely understood it, but it seems pretty good. I recommend a search of this BBS for it. If you go like me, witout tape, then be very carful when drawing the epoxy over the edge of the second layer of fiber glass. In fact avoid drawing it over as much as possible. A dab approach with the brush worked best for me, but I found that I ended up with a fair number of threads, which I had to scrape off after the epoxy was set up.
I do recall I had to cut a clean edge in a few places while the fiberglass was epoxied in place after drawing the brush or squeegee over the edge of it.

Anyways, after getting the 2nd layer of epoxied in place, to feather it in, I like to use a scraper, to cut the edge down. After that sanding and third coat of epoxy is applied, to cover the exposed fiberglass from the scraping. On my canoe, I recovered the entire surface. on my kayak, I had a much thicker second coat, and opted to only apply a 3rd coat of epoxy along the edge of the second layer of fiberglass (over laping by an two inches or so), feathering it wet as much as possible into the previous layer.

turned out okay, I could have done a better job sanding prior to varnish, but overall I'm happy with my results. Be warned however, I'm not the most fussy person on this board by a long shot.

good luck

Myrl

: JJ

: JJ