Levelling epoxy before varnish

[canadianhoser]

How much should I level out the epoxy layer before I start my varnish work?  I’m not yet at that stage, but I have gone and removed all the apparent runs in the epoxy coat, but I can still feel irregularities in the epoxy.  I’m expecting to put down about 5 coats of varnish before my work is done, so my question is whether I should wait and do more of my leveling work once I begin to varnish on, or really work on reducing these irregularities at this stage.

Thanks.

[stretchMike]

Varnish will not have the body to fill irregularities; it will highlight them – so you need to level now. I added a full extra coat of epoxy to get a good surface before varnishing. Alternatively, if irregularities are limited you could spot recoat with epoxy and sand.

I know there is an urgency to get going with the varnish, but worth taking your time to get epoxy finish right before moving on.

from another Canuck.

[canadianhoser]

Thanks.  I’ve been hitting the bumps with a razor blade as I’ve been working on other areas, and will also go over with the random-orbital sander and possibly some fairing boards before I start any varnish.  I’m about 200 pages in on the manual, just completing the doors.  I’ve been jumping around a bit, but will be putting a truck bed coating on the bottom this weekend before I flip it back over.

[PatandRay]

After we built the teardrop we built a kayak.  Before we went into the varnish layer, we went over the epoxy with a 3M green abrasive pad very gently.  With that we obtained the most uniform epoxy surface yet. It was a very uniform grey. Varnish went on much easier than before but we mostly attributed that to the temperature.

 

[blue70beetle]

Does the 3M pad do better than 120 grit at removing material to level the epoxy? Or is it simply for obtaining a consistent surface after cleanup of the rough areas?

[PatandRay]

The 3M seems to be finer than 120 but cuts epoxy better than most sandpapers we have used.  Because of the cutting feature, you do not want to apply a lot of pressure.  With easy pressure you can get an even look of grey across the epoxy and the varnish job was the easiest yet.

Another non-conventional tool we have used was neoprene as an applicator for epoxy and also a tipping tool.  We were desperate and could not find a good tipping brush when we tried it.  I do not have the specs on the density but it is a pretty fine grain and about a half inch thick.  We can buy it locally by the foot off a 2 foot wide roll.

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