Epoxy Encapsulation, 58 hours.

Today and tommorrow the temps are the warmest they will be for the next five days so tonight I encapsulated the deck and sides in epoxy. Once this cures I will flip it over and do the bottom. The temps are lower than ideal even with the electric heaters going so cure might take up to two days. I sure like the grain patterns of the dark Sapele Mahogany.

The instructions do not have this encapsulation step. They have you go ahead and lay the fiberglass and wet it out over the bare wood. My experience building my Glen-L Zip Runabout www.vupilot.blogspot.com is that the bare wood soaks up a lot of epoxy and makes it more difficult judge how much epoxy to use to wet out the fiberglass without over-doing it.

By encapsulating the kayak now the wood will soak up the fiberglass wet-out more uniformly during the fiberglassing process. To prep for fiberglass I just need to sand the encapsulation coat until it has no shine. Then it will be ready to glass. Plus, this gives you a preview of what it will look like when finished and gives you the chance to fix any trouble spots that appear before they are forever entombed in fiberglass.