What I do is apply a nice coating of slow cure
: epoxy over the dry cloth on unsealed wood, when I have covered
: about three ft of the length I apply some good heat with the
: heat gun to that area to get it nice and runny so that it wets
: out and sinks in well. .

: Et

Running a heat gun over resin on dry wood! No bubbles from wood off-gassing?

Ah, the luck of the Irish!

I'm the guy that started using and advocating a seal coat on bare wood.

I build professionally, so I need a fool-proof system to consistently reproduce a totally transparent lay-up.

I can't rely on luck, or a combination of ignored variables, to get it right every time.

I had to look at the variables and figure out a procedure that worked EVERY time so I could
sleep the night before I glassed a boat for someone else.

Sure, if you don't care so much about getting a perfect transparent lay-up you can ignore, or be oblivious to a lot of
potential problems. Honestly, if I were building a boat for myself I wouldn't be so fussy.

Maybe it's because I had an over-critical dad, but I don't want to have the slightest, bubble, silver fleck,
or white cloudy-ness, to give a customer something to complain about. That's the standard I set, which is
as it should be for a professional.

Early on in my boat building, I noticed very small bubbles, silver fleck (a silvery fiberglass pattern, when viewed
from certain angles) and sometimes, I had cloudy glass, or a second layer of glass was visible on the
stems and deck/hull seams.

I knew wood fought to absorb resin and fiberglass fought absorb resin every time I wet-out glass and wood in one step.

Plus there's wood off-gassing to deal with. I remember a post here where someone thought wood off-gassing was
a hoax. Find out for yourself. Make a small wood strip panel. Coat it with epoxy and put it in the sun, or under a spot
light. The rising temperature of a shop won't give you such dramatic results, but it will fill your wet-out glass with
bubbles, which are most often not even visible until you varnish.

A seal coat of bare wood gives the wood the resin it needs. Then when you wet-out the glass, it won't have resin starved spots
because the wood sucked out the resin. And I found a lot of the time, it was easier to seal coat one night and glass the next.
Instead of the stress of trying to prepare the bare wood for glassing, laying out and smoothing out the glass and
doing the wet-out all in one night.

I always do my seal coat, or fiberglass wet-out in the evening when temperatures are naturally falling. I leave my shop for the night
and come back the next morning when the epoxy fumes have dissipated.

So, seal coat with dropping temps, gives the wood what it needs, and thin resin, small batches, warm shop, with dropping temps
makes the glass transparent.

If you're building one kayak and don't care if it's perfect, you can use a lot of different glassing methods
and it will definitely turn out okay. Most people will now see any flaws

But if you're a fussy guy like me, and you realize you're putting a lot of time into this thing
and you want your boat to look the best it can, then you may find it worth your time to follow my suggestions.

For details see my epoxy web page @ - http://www.laughingloon.com/epoxy.html

Rob