Digression over, and back to building. Glassing the outside was much easier than glassing the inside - I don' know why I was worried about it!

Masking tape covers up the last 1/2" up to the sheer, to leave a bare wood section for the final deck to hull joining tape. I haven't done tests so don' know whether this actuall is any stonger than just glassing all the way to the edge.

Here the fill coats hav been applied as soon as the glasscloth epoxy has pretty much set. I used WEST system with the normal (medium) hardener. Sets pretty quickly, you hav to work fast. Also blushes horribly, which makes it even more important to get the fill coats on before it sets properly, or you have to clean the blush off before doing the fill coats - and cleaning the blush off a layer of unfilled cloth wih all its 'weave grain' would be hard.

On the plus side though for this stage, this epoxy is pretty thick and viscous, so few fill coats are needed (1, or 2 in places). A plastic squeegie is the perfect thing for fill coats.

Speaking of which, I used a combination of brush and squeegie for wetting out the cloth. I tried a roller for about 10 seconds, but this epoxy is so sticky that the cloth just stuck to the roller, which is a disaster. But brush and squeegie were fine.