When I was getting ready to glass the outside of my current project, I applied a seal coat of epoxy on the outside of the hull. After rolling it on, it was not very smooth so I tipped it off with a foam brush but it still had a slightly "rough" feel to it.
Having read that the object of applying the seal coat is to simply seal the wood and any excess epoxy is just dead weight, I took a couple of paper towels and wiped a small section to see if the surface would smooth out. What I experienced was that the surface smoothed out as I wiped, the epoxy seemed to be "pressed" slightly into the grain and I was removing quite a bit of excess epoxy with the towels. So, I decided to "wipe down" the entire hull with paper towels and see if I could get a good result. After the epoxy cured, the surface was very smooth and the glass cloth wet out great without any starvation that I could detect.
I used this same approach on the outside of the deck and inside both deck and hull. I like the result I got as it provided me a very smooth sealed surface to drape the cloth over.

So, my question to the "experts" on this forum is: Have you ever done anything similar and what were your results. Also, would appreciate any comments or even reprimands if they are in order.....

Bob Beaullieu