Progress again. Second coat of Epoxy.

 April was a busy time at work but I'm now into my part-time phase of retiring so I've managed to find a little time to continue on the boat.

I've managed to get two coats of epoxy on the frames and bulkheads.  I feel this is enough to seal the wood, which is the primary goal at this point.  After the hull is assembled the plywood will receive several coats of either paint or varnish (varnished 'bright-work' will be mostly inside the cabin only). 

all shiny now.

 The first coat of epoxy was to 'wet' the plywood and so was spread fairly thin using a plastic squeegee and then rolled with a foam roller.  Like any first-coat, this raised the fibers of the wood and received some sanding before the second coat.

I wanted the second coat to have some thickness and I sought a way of distributing an even amount of epoxy across the plywood.  At first I tried a notched trowel, but found the thin and runny (low viscosity) epoxy just flowed through without really spreading.  Then I tried my plastic squeegee but couldn't regulate all the areas to have roughly the same amount of epoxy.  

4-1/2 inch mixing bowl, 3/4 inch wide mixing stick, and 4 inch foam roller 

 I ended up with a technique of making a batch of epoxy (estimating how much to make up).  Then I used my mixing stick to spoon it out of the bowl and drizzle it around the entire piece until the bowl was empty and the drizzled epoxy looked roughly distributed evenly.  (Oh, the binder clip on the mixing cup??  That's a reminder to always pick it up from the same side, so I don't get the epoxy all over my clean gloves.)

Next step was to roll the drizzles flat to spread them out.  If my roller was new, I made one area of drizzles extra thick and started my roller there so that the amount of epoxy used to wet out the roller did not leave the starting area too thin.  Roll with long strokes and keep away from the edges at this point, you don't want a thick drizzle splotch pushed over the edge.  (I can't recommend having palsy in your old-age, but the shaky hands do, in fact, make drizzling back and forth effortless.)

After the initial roll out, I worked the edges.  Using shorter strokes and the roller at an angle to the edge.  The angle allows me to roll most of roller past the edge without actually dropping over or off the edge. 

After all the edges are coated, I finished by rolling the entire area first one direction then the other.  This gave what at least appeared to be a fairly even and uniform thickness of epoxy across the whole works.

Using a slow version of epoxy hardener, allowed the epoxy to still be fairly wet after the rolling.  This allowed time for the low-viscosity epoxy to spread and level itself resulting in a somewhat smooth surface without roller marks or impressions.

I did not do the 'tipping' the books talk about.  Tipping is following the roller work with a gentle one direction brushing to help smooth things, pop air bubbles, etc.