Major progress today. Getting ready to do the fiberglass, I mixed out some grout (foamboard glue with foam shavings from sanding) and filled any screw holes and the gap where I glued the top onto the sides so that I wouldn't have to try to fill them with resin. when I did the 4" wide strips at the front and back last week, there were a couple of screw holes where the resin ran through the foamboard to the other side and left a hard nodule there.
So... My plan was to give myself some overlap on each side and only paint resin into the middle of each piece so that I'd be able to flip the shell over after everything had hardened up and work the fabric around all of the edges...
But the resin is so darn runny, there was no way that was going to work. I got it all over the fabric that was supposed to stay clean and wrap around later, so that was a no go. I went ahead and wet everything out and trimmed up the edges:
I did not follow my own advice for the first sheet that I laid down and I failed to paint resin onto the foamboard before putting the fabric on, and I had a bit of poor adhesion there... For the second one, I painted up the foamboard and laid the fabric over. That worked much better.
I think I like using the squeegee to spread resin out over the foam, then laying down the cloth, and using a paintbrush to work resin into the cloth. The bristles seem to be good for working air pockets out of the cloth. As the resin gels up, the paintbrush is good for going around and tapping down any bits that are trying to stick up around the edges...
I didn't end up using the polyester stuff. The bit of overlap between the two pieces of cloth looked so smooth that I didn't feel like hassling with it.