Most of the mahogany planking was stained using the stain provided in the kit with the exception of the two "side boards" on the deck which I stained using a water base stain (Light mahogany) this was because I wanted to add a little bit of contrast to the deck area.
Staining the side was straight forward but the deck was a bit more time consuming. The manual recommends to stain allover the deck and wipe off any excess stain that may be left over on the styrene, when I experimented using this method on my test pieces I was not happy with the result so I stained each plank individually using a small paint brush and removed any slight stain that may have touch the styrene with a small piece of cloth and tooth pick.
When the staining is finished the hull takes on a bright orange colour but once resin is applied it take son a nice honey looking colour.

For the Epoxy resin I used the West Systems epoxy resin which I had read about on the www.rcgroups.com discussions forum. I have used a few types of resins over the last few years and have never been very happy with the end result that I got so I was apprehensive on purchasing this resin as it is not cheap and I did not know if I would end up have similar results to previous resins I have used before, but I have to say that this stuff is the best I have use yet and it is easy to work with.
For the Fiber glass cloth I used 2.oz (57gr) cloth. The resin containers come with a set of dispensers that give you the exact amount of resin and hardener at the correct ratio (5 resin : 1 hardener) but I found this was too much at a time and I was wasting the unused mixture so I opted for mixing a smaller quantity of 10ml+2ml (still maintaining the 5:1 ratio) using a measuring spoon, I also used denatured alcohol for diluting the mixture this was used at the same amount as the harder (10ml resin + 2ml Hardener + 2 ml alcohol) and the result was fine.

When applying the first layer of resin over the cloth I had to pay a lot of attention to get rid of any air bubble that may form under the cloth you can see a few of these air bubbles on the test pieces I had done.
Despite very attention I did end up with a few which I managed to get rid of after the resin had hardened using a sharp hobby knife but it is delicate work and I had to be vary carefully not to go into the wood as it will leave a mark you can not get rid of