Hi Larry and crew - I have built three boats, all with MAS epoxy. I did not precoat the first. It came out just fine, thank you. No bubbles, clear to the cedar. I saved a coat under the glass and put it over the glass. Sanding before varnishing was clean, ie. no glass showing . The second cedar boat I precoated, inside and out. After sanding the final of four fill coats, I got glass patches showing through. It is going to take a couple more coats to get a thick enough epoxy so that when it is finally ready for varnish, there is no glass showing. I could have covered the glass spots with varnish and it would not be seen - until I took the boat out in the sun. Precoating leaves the glass a little off the wood, which can cause the problems I just described, and requires additional coat$ to fix the mess.

Before finishing that boat, I built another - a mahogany Wee Lassie II. There were zillions of open pores. The hull had been intensively prepared for glass, with water wetting to show up any bad spots (there were none), and vacuumed and wiped. The glass was put on with MAS slow, followed by four fill coats, all brushed on. Final scraping and sanding did not show any glass, and varnishing went fine.

Precoating has been banned from my shop, along with the staple gun. Put me down for "No".