I have experienced the same.   After filling the weave or nearly so after a couple coats of epoxy a good deal of sanding has evened the finish.   A fair amount of work but I have been pleased with the result.   Further finish coats applied thinly with a yellow roller and tipped with a brush have produced a better result, but light sanding is still required.   This seems to be a common occurrence.   I am nearing the varnish stage  and hoping for the best.  Good luck.   

The pooling sounds as if there's too much epoxy being applied. There's 3 ways I get around this in my builds.

First, use less epoxy and give it longer to soak in while wetting out. This is the easiest and most economical way, but also the trickiest. You have to have done enough layups to know how much is enough vs. not enough. If you don't get it just right, you get a starved layup.

Second, wet out the glass on a large polyethylene covered table and then move it onto the boat. It's much lower risk because you never have to move the glass to the boat unless it's perfectly wet out. It's also next to impossible to have too much epoxy by the time you get it to the boat. The downsides are a very small possibility of there being just enough epoxy for the glass and not for the wood, and the incredible messiness. The first can be avoided by rolling a very thin layer onto the boat just before applying the glass, the second can be allevieated with an assistant.

Third, apply the glass and epoxy as normal, but then cover the boate with paper towels to blot the excess. Wait until the towels are either soaked through or 45 seconds, whichever comes first. Also a bit messy disposing of the paper towels, but easily done by one person.

All three of these methods yield a fully wet out surface ready for the weave to be filled. If that's done using many thin coats instead of a couple of thick ones, there should be no drips or floating and very little sanding.

Have fun,

Laszlo

   William and Laszlo, thank you for your comments.  Very helpful!

I experienced a good deal of waviness on my Wood Duck 12 which My grandson and I have been building.   Laszlo is right....I think too thick an epoxy coat on both the first and second applications caused mine.   We have a Wood Duck Double we will work on next.   I like Laszlo's idea of sopping up any excess with the paper towels and will give that a try.   Anything would beat the need for a lot of sanding.   Thanks Laszlo for your shared experience.   Good luck CPM.

   I do most of my glassing outside in the warm weather.  I prefer fast epoxies like the west fast.  Once you get the hang of it, they are just faster and some of things that develop are not a problem in the shorter time frame.

Vertical surfaces are always a bit of a problem, and best bet is to incline them or pre-coat them so they aren't vertical, but mostly I just get on with them.

most of my glass is done with the dry method where one applies the cloth dry, and wets the cloth and substrate in the same step.  Thick epoxies like mas and west are usually best applied with a squeegee.  if your original coat was screeded down level and equally, then often uneven patches are due to the material soaking in.  You can seize the surface with epoxy and let it cure sticky then apply glass, but that is an extreme measure, and looking at CLC boats I don't see any situation where that would be called for.  A classic for that would be endgrain balsacore that wasn't factory coated.

So two things people do that lead to patchyness are:

1) they think they applied it evenly, but they were fooling themselves.  I think often people struggling to get epoxy on are so happy to have it on the work and they want it to all look glassy and smooth; and they don't want it to get foamy by mooving it around; and they don't want to have to throw out foamy excess.  So they kid themselves into thinking the glassy smooth bits are good, and the dull bits are bad, rather than making it all evenly dull.  Other than a flow coat, there really aren't situations where the first coat will go down glassy all over you are looking for flat or pebbly.  Not dry though. Trying for the perfect clear finish puts more pressure on.  Real boats are painted, but many a first timer has also turned out a piano grade clear finish, so it is a personal thing.

2) Often if one only gets to work weekends and evenings, one will work like crazy to get to the point where on can do the glassing.  That is a STEP.  But what may happen is the lights are turned off and the cure is happening and the air temperature is falling, more porous sections will cool and suck the epoxy out of the cloth.  Patches that look OK and patches that look like screen door netting when you go in the shop the following morning are a clue, but it doesn't have to be that dramatic.

So you can deal with this by doing your glassing in reasonable temps that are stable.  If you heat to beat the cool-off, sometimes you get bubbles when the wood outgasses.  Maybe leaving the glassing for another day will get you conditions you like better.   Fast hardener can help because it doesn't sit around so long, but once you get the hang of it, you can make most situations work out.

One way to get better results with application, more easily, are rollers.  They are this magic tool that pics up the media where there is surplus and deposits it where there is a deficit.  Cool, right?  Problem is rollers (we are taking the 3/8" nap dollar store furries here, not the premium foam ones), don't work with thick epoxies.  Basic Raka, and original System III roll well, and are fine for coatings.  Don't buy into the idea that all epoxies are the same for end results.  If your design specs graphite tow and say WEST, you better stick to that.  But for coating ply, stuff like RAKA is ok.

Another problem is pouring stuff directly onto the glass.  You will oversaturate the wood and it will be difficult to get a perfect level.  One Russ tip is to use a pice of scrap as an easel, pour onto that, and use the roller to get that onto the glass/boat.  Of course pouring can be made to work, but less likely on verticals anyway, and the advice here is relative to a situation where something isn't working, so get back to the basics.  Right tool for right epoxy; right method; right conditions; etc... (added this para before the below one)

Friend of CLC Russ Brown is a WEST guy, and he has a couple of ebooks on epoxies and paints.  He works a system that requires the whole program to be followed, but most of the difficulty is mixing and matching techniques, epoxies, tools, etc...  Sure it can work, but you may make a lot of messes before you get your own system worked out.  This kind of deal is one situation where the internet is not helpful.  You will get lots of ideas, but they may not play well together, while there are other deals where anything work pretty well, and you can pick and choose to your hearts delight.  A MAS system probably helps you understand WEST, but everything may not apply.  I have used dozens of different epoxies, but I haven't tested out Russ's system.  I worked a few days with his dad, who put me onto rollers.  Russ is well know as one of the fastest and cleanest workers with epoxy out there.  I have guys I respect who respect him.

MultiPly,  thank you for such a long, detailed, and thoughtful answer.  Incredibly helpful. With your advice in mind, I glassed the last bit of my canoe yesterday, and it came out much better.   I think your description of going for an evenly dull surface helped me the most.  I was certainly aplying too much epoxy, and not spreading it or squeegeeing (not sure if that is a real word!) enough.  Again, thank you!