[oldbluesplayer]

Will - from my experience, you absolutely must use some way to keep from epoxying the bolts in place.

Also, are you planning to use any means to spread the bolt tension force out over a larger area ?

If you read thru my thread, you will see I used pieces of 2x4 on the bolts to spread the bolt loads out across the transom as it cured - other readers contributed their methods inside that same thread.

I chose not to use any release agent, for fear of it soaking into the wood, contaminating it, and preventing good adhesion when I plugged the holes later on.

what I did was to wrap the bolts in tin foil. I drilled my thru bolt holes at 3/8", used 5/16" carriage bolts, because they are threaded full shank, wrapped in tin foil, and didn't worry if the squeeze out epoxy grabbed the tin foil - after that segment was cured, I re-drilled the hole back to 3/8" in preparation for the next layer, cleaning out any residual tin foil.

At the end, I drill / cleaned the holes, taped off on one side, flush, and taped a dam on the other side, and filled with a thickened epoxy mixture.

hope that helps some

Bill