: Well; I've just wet out the glass on my hull, and am very happy
: with the results. Here's my problem though... I had bought some
: West foam rollers for the fill coats, and when I went to get
: them I learned that my wife used them to paint the bathroom!!!!
: Yikes; I have no idea how to apply fill coats now which should
: start in 4-6 hours. Has anyone had any sucess with regular paint
: rollers? Foam or nap?

If you haven't gotten to the store for foam rollers yet, get a plastic milk carton, pour the milk into a pitcher, and cut up the plastic to make some flexible squeegees. The fill coat is MUCh less resin than you used for wetting out the fabric, and may even be less than what you used for your seal coat. Here's why: The resin has no place to soak in! It has to sit on the surface, and it must be very thin or it will drip and run.

Paint rollers put on a thin coat of paint, but paint will set up in 20 minutes once it has been spread, ans the solvents in the paint have now got a huge surface area to evaporate from. But epoxy doesn't set up by evaporation. It sets up by polymerization, and that takes some heat. Spread it thin and you dissipate the heat, making it take longer for the resin to gel. While we wait for the resin to gel, gravity is treating it to a slow ride down the sides of the boat. The thinner you apply this the better you are. A thin coat has enough tack to stay in place for a while.

So, mix a small amount of resin and apply it as a skim coat over your wetout coat. Use the edge of a flexible squeegee to scrape off any resin which it touches. All you want to do is leave enough behind to fill the tiny wells caused by the low areas of the weave of the fabric. You want to barely dampen the surface, not put on a layer as thick as paint on a wall.

Remember when I said that the new resin will take components from the uncured materials in the underlying coat? I have a feeling this action adds to the viscosity of the material in creating the effect known as "telegraphing".
Telegraphing allows the surface of the fresh coat to reproduce the contours of the surface it is applied to. Unlike a self-leveling paint, it won't flatten out to a smooth layer. This will certainly fill the valleys with resin, but it also leaves a lot of excess resin on top of the highest part of the weave. You need to sand or scrape to remove these mini hills. The more you put on, the more you sand off later. It is much easier, faster, and cheaper to be very frugal with the material you use for your fill coat(s). And the result is a lighter boat with a great finish.

If you really need a thicker layer of resin after that, put on a third coat, then let that sit for a month or two, and sand it smooth before you varnish. The wait is so it hardens and completely cures. In the meantime you can paddle the boat and let the water wash off any amine blush. The light sanding gets rid of river scum, or ocean crud as well as any remaining amines. Of course if you do a bit of bashing to the hull in your months of use you can patch that, and add reinforcing strips to areas which seem to get the most abuse, before you varnish. That way ou don't have to strip off your varnish to get to the base resin for those oh-too-common first fixes.

Keep a tarp over the boat, or store it in a garage or shaded carport--anything to keep it out of multiple days of direct sunlight--and you'll have no problem with UV damage. Once it is varnished you'll want to store it this way anyhow to stretch the years between revarnishing.

Hope this helps.

PGJ