I have just started doing cheater coats routinely as part of my glassing schedule (free laps).
From my experience the extra time taken to do the cheater coats, is more than off-set by the potential extra time taken to sort out the odd sand through to the weave, you know the areas around the nose and tail and the top apex of the deck rail where it seems easy not to have enough ‘sanding margin’ after a cheater coat the actual hotcoat can be thinner and nice and even, while still having enough resin to work with on the delicate areas, so not much weight added?
Basically I’m fishing for some advanced techniques to to add more speed and routine to my finishing, so it would be great to hear from the more experienced pros to see how far they take using cheater coats.
at the Bing glass shop ALL the boards get a thin laminating coat then the waxed hotcoat, it leads to nearly all the boards NOT showing weave after sanding. I also did this when I first started glassing my own boards 55 years ago, but I had NO clue how the schedule really went
what I meant was, after the lamination and the glassers do a very clean, tight lamination, Channin’s old glasser would flood the lams, there were runs at the nose and tail rockers. They brush a thin coat of laminating resin before the waxed hotcoat, keeps the laps and logos from getting hit and they are flat when glossed or acrylic’d
Not a pro, but I just adopted a cheater technique that is giving good results. I always baste and grind the deck lap (epoxy) prior to lamming the deck. I usually do this with 1.5 oz mixed epoxy on shortboards, which covers the lap line with a bit of extra left. Then, with the extra, I brush a coat over my usual sanding trouble spots on the bottom: fin box areas and logos. Now when I hot coat, I 've got that extra cushion in the trouble spots. Sanding has come out with notable improvement in my usual trouble spots.