I know that this is a fairly well exercised topic, so forgive me for starting another thread on it... 

After several years of on and off effort an almost complete rebuild of 2434 is near completion; new everything except hull planks and foils, which were pretty sound to start with. With hindsight I should've built a boat from scratch, I was only going to repaint....

My thoughts are now turning to coatings but with little experience its a difficult choice to decide whats needed and will work for that boat. I'm happy to spend what I need, but dont want to go mad if I don't need too.  

I need to  paint the hull inside and out and varnish the deck and other bits. Its an old hull, I've tried to stiffen it up but it will still flex. The question is really do I coat everything in epoxy (SP106/SP320) first then paint and varnish, or not. If so, do I need to use something like Eposeal first, or not. 

Any advice very gratefully accepted!

Personnaly, I would start with the epoxy on bare wood.
Use the very fine glass mat on areas of high stress (when you have a couple of coats of epoxy on it will disappear from sight), and add acouple of coats over that area.
I'd suggest that the wooden knees, centreboard fillets (around the hog) etc.

Use disposable (foam) drushes - they're cheap & you can't re-use an epoxy brush easily...

Once you have enough epoxy on the bare hull, wash (to remove any amine bloom) sand lightly to remove the high spots, paint & varnish as normal (you'll be flattening the paint/varish to give smooth finish).

I'd suggest that you don't use a 2 pot paint or varnish - I think they are too rigid for a flexing hull - you may be better using a traditional (non-polyurethane) coating.

Colin (3387)