Epoxy Coating

 When I was repairing the old rowboat I bought a gallon of System Three epoxy, but since then I've done a lot more reading on epoxy.  One of the drawbacks of epoxy is that when it fully cures a by-product called 'amine blush' rises to the surface.  This must be removed before you can do another layer of epoxy.  Although amine-blush is a wax like substance, it is water soluble and is fairly easy to clean off.

But with further searching I found the MAS brand of epoxy whose formula prevents any significant amine-blush, so it does not require washing between coats.  It still recommends sanding between coats like System Three, but there's no messy washing and drying every little part.

I will use up the System Three doing the gluing of layers together and for filleting in the corners, but for all the surface coating and for the fiber-glassing I will be using the MAS brand. 

 I managed to get a couple of hours epoxy work done this last weekend, and succeeded in getting one side of all seven pieces coated.  I did the three larger pieces on Saturday and finished the others on Sunday.  Each session lasting about an hour.  During this hour, I mixed 3 to 4 batches of epoxy, so it was always fresh, but the foam roller began to gel and stiffen up by the end of the hour.

 My technique consisted of drizzling a line of epoxy at one end, scraping it out with a squeegee to cover as much area as I could, and then rolling over it with the foam roller to even it all out.  I was using moderate pressure with the squeegee so this may be a thinner layer than other people do.  All my reading has not turned up any specification for layer thickness (some recommendation saying how many grams of epoxy covers what area would be nice??).  This one coat of one side of these 7 pieces used about 11 ounces so far, out of the 1-1/2 gallon (192 ounces) jugs.

Whether I will do two coats or three coats at this point, I don't know.  This is a pre-assembly stage and there's plenty of opportunity later for more coats.