I put the first fill-the-weave coat on my deck glass on Tuesday night. I went to do some light scuff-sanding to see how many more, if any, fill coats were needed to fill the weave. I sanded down to the lowest level of epoxy and barely scuffed the glass (white spots of weave) so I think I'll let the deck cure so I can flip it over and start sanding on the hull. (I'm leaving the deck on the forms so I don't have to worry so much about warpage). Then, when the hull is about ready for glass, I'll pull of the deck, sand the inside quick, and glass the inside of the deck and outside of the hull in one evening.

Anyhow, to get back to the subject of this post; I cut all of the pine strips for my deck out of one piece of 1x6-10' pine. I stripped the deck--everything matched beautifully. I sanded the boat with 80-grit in my ROS--everything matched beautifully. I did some final fairing with a 100-grit fairing board--everything matched beautifully. I wet out the glass on the boat--still matched beautifully. Then, after filling the weave, the natural beauty of the wood started to show through, and it looks like crap! Well, not that bad, but I was shooting for a high level of color coordination that I fell short of. Seems that pine has a natural grain direction. It has some degree of illuminescense (right word?) that changes as the viewer's angle with the light source changes. I can see where I flipped strips end-for-end to save wood. You can tell which strips were from which side of the original board. If you're shooting for near-perfection in a boat, keep all boards in the same order, from the original board, and don't flip strips over, or end-for-end.

On the other hand, redwood doesn't have the same luminescense, so the redwood parts that were flipped every which way all match nicely and have a deep glow.

Hmmph.

Shawn