I find that you can use up to 6-oz woven fiberglass or so and it still comes
out clear when finished. The fiberglass weave doesn't show through and the
wood just looks varnished. I'm betting that on your kayak that it has
either 4-oz or 6-oz cloth on it and no additional glass tape on the exterior
seams, right? And as someone else mentioned, the epoxy gives the wood color
kind of like varnish does. Just wetting out wood darkens it, then depending
on which epoxy you choose, you'll get varying degrees of varnish-like golden
color added too. Some epoxies are water-clear and some are quite golden.
Check with the manufacturer for a description of their products before you
buy. You'll also varnish the kayak too, if only to provide UV protection to
the epoxy. This will add more golden hue to the boat. You can also stain
the wood prior to doing the epoxy work. Use a water-based stain and
test-glass a sample first to make sure the glass adheres properly. Epoxy a
strip of glass on plain wood and a very similar strip on a stained piece of
the same kind of wood, let cure for a few days at 70F or higher, then pull
the strips off with pliers. If there is an adhesion problem on the stained
piece, you'll notice the difference. Not necessary to use higher tech
methods than that. That said, I personally like the color of the wood
without stain added. It darkens up quite nicely and looks naturally
beautiful. Finally ...buy some wood flour from RAKA and some from System
Three, then mix and match until your thickened, cured, epoxy matches the
wood color. The RAKA stuff produces a much darker color and the System
Three stuff a much lighter color. Not sure what type of woods they use, but
one looks like a mahogany brown (RAKA) and the other is quite a bit lighter
(Alder? Maple?). The addition of colloidal silica, which is white, can be
used to lighten it up for a fine-tune on a mix that is just barely too dark
too. Colloidal silica is also called amorphic silica, Cab-o-Sil, or just
'silica', depending on who you buy it from. I always mix some in anyway
....about 20% silica plus 80% wood flour is my usual starting point. Oh, and
don't make the fillets bigger than you need too. Beginners generally go to
town on fillet size and there's no reason to. Keep them small and pretty
and the joints will STILL be stronger than the wood. Try a test sample
(glued, glassed) to see ...the wood breaks first. If you get a chance,
perform a close examination on a bright finished stitch-n-tape kayak at your
local shop if you have one around, or take a close look at kayak projects
online ...look for close-up photos.

Brian


"Jack" wrote in message news:miVHe.7163$W72.3090@trndny05...
I am going to build a kayak to begin to learn how to build boats.

Dumb newbie question for you. On a stitch and glue kit, when you
fiberglass it, how does the stained wood come through the fiberglass??
For the pictures I see on the pygmy and clc sites, it looks like the wood
is stained, but the instructions for the kit show the boat is completely
fiberglassed. How can the be?

Thank you for your time. BTW, thanks for the link to the glenl site.
Love the runabout kit. would love to build one of those someday.