[Woodyboat]

I have used the very same idea when rebuilding door panels and head liners for other cars - non chevies - but the process is exactly the same. In my case, I used MAS epoxies because it is a lot more environmentally friendly than polyester resins are. There are no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) with MAS brand epoxies. The VOCs are what cause the problems with disposing of the excess, can cause alergic skin reactions, force you to wear a respirator and so forth.

And here is a quick lesson from a guy who has done TONS of fiberglass epoxy work. (...hence my name "Woodyboat") We call factory built fiberglass boats "FRP" because it is easier to spell on a forum than to type out "Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic." But this distinction needs to be made between FRP fiberglass and epoxy fiberglass. FRP glass is polyester based and it's the mainstay of the professional boatbuilding industry. It's ok and it's cheap but has lots of VOCs. You can buy little kits at Autozone and Advance. But polyester does not bond well with wood or paper products. It will hold for a while - a few years or so - but in time, will let loose and delaminate. The boat building industry uses a lot of wood in their FRP boats and then when the glass and woods delaminate, they blame it on the wood instead of putting the blame where it really should be - on the polyester. You will hear a lot of talk in the boatbuilding industry about how wood always rots and that is just complete nonsense. The polyester first delaminates from the wood, moisture gets in and YES it does rot. But if epoxy were used in the first place, there would never be any delamination and thus, no moisture could ever get in. Get it?

On the other hand, epoxy bonds very well with wood, paper and masonite and will far outlast the vehicle. ... the owner, the owner's grandkids and so on. Epoxies have revolutionized the wooden boat building hobby and fine mahogany runabouts become family heirlooms with no neglible wear for decades when cared for correctly. When building headliners, I use either masonite or luan if I'm starting from scratch to build a new one. I will usually plan on two coats because sometimes quite a bit of the epoxy can be absorbed into the luan but that's ok. Think of it as a primer coat and keep working. As the catalyst kicks off, the stuff will go through a tacky phase within a few hours and that's when it's ready for the next coat. Cure times are rather slow and that's what you want, especially if it's your fist time. So don't panic if you come back the following morning after a night of mixing and applying and it's not ready to sand. You will want to keep applying more coats as long as the texture of the fiberglass mat can be seen or felt. Of course, when the epoxy is completely cured, it can be sanded smooth with a D.A. sander. Sanding and cutting is the only time you should need some sort of dust mask.

I would not try to epoxy the project with the headliner up in place. Rather, when I do one, I estimate the bend and curvature and work that out on a big table with plenty of cardboard down to collect drips. There is a certain amount of give to it. If you get close, it should fit. If you build the thing oversize, you can always cut it to shape with a cutting wheel. If you cut too much off of it, you can always epoxy the boo boo right back or add more glass cloth and luan - whatever you need to do. It's darn near foolproof. You will want to watch your temperatures and choose the correct catalyst for the temps in your garage. If your catalyst calls for 90 degrees and it's 50 degrees in the shop, it might be a very long time kicking off. On the other hand, if it's 90 degrees and you're using a 50 degree kicker, you had better be ready to work super fast. LOL, it's not important how I know that.

Get plenty of nitrile gloves and use acetone to clean up messes.

If I'm repairing an old door panel or headliner, I simply make sure that the backer board is as clean as I can get it and completely dry. I will always use some fiberglass mat. It only makes sense.

Also, I use ONLY MAS brand epoxies because of their not having any VOCs. A boatbuilding friend has had such severe allergic reactions to VOCs that he has been hospitalized after glassing the hull on his boat. He switched to MAS when he helped me with one of my boats and has never looked back. But MAS is rather pricey and that's the trade-off. If you want to really do something up that is completely your own design and are willing to pay a little more, then there is no better solution than MAS. It is the Mercedes of epoxies. I love the stuff.

Of course, all my custom car buddies think that all of this is WAY overkill for headliners and such but I'm ok with that. Better too much than too little.