Couple of things I do for epoxy work:
- watch garage sales for old card tables. Buy every one you can. Tape wax paper onto them and then lay your dry precut cloth pieces on tables. Different sizes for different tables, dont stack the parts, so you can pick one up with sticky gloves. Wax paper keeps the tired old tables from snagging the fiberglass cloth.
- a glass bowl of acetone, for dipping your roller tools and Fisker scissors. I keep a metal pie tin over it, so I can pick it up, clean a roller, drop the lid (pie tin) back in place.
- a good chem mask. You dont get to learn ahead of time, but each and every one of us will hit a lifetime limit on exposure. Youll know when you get there by the duration of the vomiting episodes. I hit the wall about 10 years ago....only small layups, now.
- I like to start epoxy layups about midnite. It buys me more work time, so I can slow down and think. It also means I go straight to bed after cleanup, and can sleep off most of the "spin dizzy" episodes.
- if you need to lay up/fill a small area that has "bad gravity" (an area on the lower side of a part that cant be flipped over), make a large flap of duct tape sections. Stick the bottom edge of the flap hanging like a dogs tongue on a hot day. Stick it just below where your layup/fill will occur. Apply your epoxy materials, and then squeegee the "tongue" upward and smooth out. Leave the flap on until cured, the epoxy wont stick to the duct tape glue. I've used this method to fix "blister boats", knocking out a complete hull in two nights, when the yard guys were going to take a week of filling and grinding.
- outside corners can be tough on small areas. Sometimes I fold a band of wax paper and pull it over the problem corner as a slight tensioner. Many times , it has enough grip to hold the bend just by the long area of flat contact on each side....weird. It is easier to sand off a little stuck wax paper, than to grind through the bubbles and make repairs.
Hope this is useful. I just do amateur stuff, and real low cost, so....not very high tech.
J