First of all, congratulations for taking the plunge. It takes a long time to actually take the leap but you'll be glad you did. You can only research so long and then you have to do it if you really want to learn anything. Also, you can't get a boat to paddle by reading about it. :-)

I know what you mean about reading too much. You can get five different opinions on every step in the process. My recommendation is to read them all carefully, try the one that makes the most sense to you, and if you aren't happy with it, try something else. Don't stick with the first method just because someone else loves it and swears by it.

For me, brushing was definitely the right choice for the saturation coat on the cloth. But it didn't work so well for the fill coats. I had trouble getting it on thinly and evenly. Probably I was trying to get too much done with one coat and didn't squeegee enough. Now I'm using a foam roller for application and it just works better for me.

As for air bubbles, the epoxy was a solid mat of air bubbles after rolling it on. But one pass with the squeegee wiped them out. Any that might have been left went away with subsequent passes with a foam brush. It really wasn't a problem.

Like I said, pick the one that seems to have the most positives and try it. If you aren't totally pleased with the results, try the other one for the next coat. You'll know then which one works best for you. All methods have their pros and cons. A cheap chip brush sheds those @#*% bristle hairs everywhere and foam leaves more lint. The hairs about drove me nuts and I prefer a little lint to picking and scraping off hairs.

I'm a first timer and I pre-coated the panels before I stitched. Given all the filling and tinkering I did, I think it was the right choice. I did it more for preventing staining than for fear of starving the glass, however. I was so tentative with the squeegee for my first glassing attempts that I doubt I would have starved it anywhere, but it was nice not to have to worry about going back and putting more epoxy on white spots and I didn't seem to get much if any floating.

Jump on in and learn by doing. Mistakes can be aggravating, but almost always fixed.

Patsy