:I friggin' hate sanding epoxy,

I can understand that, I also used to hate it. I thought God loves a joke and I choose a profession where I have to sand all the time to keep him laughing! At some point I realized I was just stubbornly "running against the wind".

Sanding wasn't working. I WASN'T THINKING.

I had a few books on building a stripper canoe and I was just doing what other people were doing, using 80 grit sandpaper.

When I thought about it, I remembered my jewelery teacher explaining the sandpaper grit system and how you start with the coarsest grit that will level the material you are working on and then the other grits are used to make the scratches smaller and smaller until you polish the surface to a mirror surface.

I realized I was not using a coarse enough grit to start the leveling. AND a coarse grit requires enough material to remove without fear of hitting the fiberglass. So, I add three fill coats of epoxy over the glass and sand starting with 60 grit, AFTER the hull and deck are joined and seamed and stems reinforced. 60 grit cuts fast, doesn't clog and feathers seam edges easily. 60 grit allows the ROS disk to be held flat against the deck or hull and reinforces a fair surface.

Then I apply two new coats of epoxy which looks like a varnished surface after the rough sanding with 60 grit leveled the surface. Once that epoxy is hard I sand with 120 then 220 and varnish.

: and I had a
: good (or what I thought was good) cartridge respirator when I
: last drove the ROS up Pike's Peak every night for a week.

Takes me no more than a couple hours to rough sand a hull.

: Still
: felt like I'd smoked a day's output from the Camel factory all
: at once for a few days after sanding.

3M's 7500 series half-face mask silicone masks are the most comfortable serious masks I used.

They are not that expensive, so I have one with dust cartridges and one with organic vapor cartridges.

To make it all work, a good ROS that will hook into a vacuum for dust removal is a must.

Rob