> Earl,

> Please help us all here on this Board not make the same mistake you did.
> I'd rather learn from someone else's mistake than make the same one
> myself. I know I'll make my own, but maybe I can avoid at least one.

I probably should have said many mistakes but the costly one time wise was the way I tried to build my hatch seal. I had the idea of building a curve lip that one could fit a neoprene cover over as the seal as I have seen in commercial kayak models. I molded it in on both hatches but didn't end up with enough lip to hold the cover adequately. After trying to fix it in various ways I finally gave up and cut it out and went with a flat gasket approach.

Another learning for me was the way of applying epoxy. Applying the glass with a squeegy approach worked fine but I used a brush for the first fill coat. I just was unable to a thin enough coat applied evenly enough. I didn't want to let the epoxy cure enough to sand after the first coat - wanting the chemical bond so I continued to apply fill coats. In the end there was a lot of scraping and sanding with places with too much epoxy and places where I sanded into the glass. I then went to thin coats with a roller with a much more satisfactory end result. Earl