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Drips/runs before glassing

Blackhawk

Paddler
Joined
May 27, 2020
Messages
52
Location
New York
First time builder.
It's probably in Chapter 1 in "The Book of Duh", but I missed the part about immediately cleaning up drips when sealing the seams. After a few days of fun joyously sanding away the drips and runs I have them all flush and learned a painful and time-consuming lesson. I'm now ready to glass and plan on doing it without the saturation coat.

My question before I do this, is will the drips/runs fade into the glass? What about the darker ones where it was mixed with wood flour?
If so, anything I can do about it, or am I stuck with those blemishes?
 
I take it the drips ran onto bare wood. If so, then you are kind of stuck with it on a plywood boat, since if you tried to sand them off completely, you risk sanding into the ply layer and the look will be worse if you sand through the thin outer veneer layer.
 
I take it the drips ran onto bare wood. If so, then you are kind of stuck with it on a plywood boat, since if you tried to sand them off completely, you risk sanding into the ply layer and the look will be worse if you sand through the thin outer veneer layer.
:(I was afraid of that. I assume staining prior to glassing or varnishing after won't help?
 
I've seen some fairly bad runs virtually disappear after glassing - as it's a fairly common thing for beginners to make lots of drips the first time and then have the boat turning out not too bad at all.

However sanding them 'away' is not the approved method at all because of the issue mentioned by Rod. If you were to do it again - a wide scraper or flatfile is much more able to solely attack the raised drip problem and not cause dishing or dipping in the adjacent much softer wood.
 
I'd definitely avoid stain. It would tend to accentuate any areas that had epoxy drips.

Most of the darker areas will probably 'blend in' much better once you have the wet-out coat of epoxy on the glass. I think the darkening of the mahogany is a chemical reaction between the epoxy hardener and the wood.

You could try to use a 'darker' varnish or add a dye at the varnish stage if necessary.

It's likely that only you - as the builder- will notice those drips, so don't fret about it too much. :)
 
Now that you have sanded them flush, I think the epoxy drips will blend in once all the plywood is saturated after fibreglassing. The wood flour drips will be noticeable, but those imperfections get muted as you add glass and varnish.
 
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