I've been playing with silk doping a wing for a North Star.  I have an old North Star wing to test on, so thought I'd try that first.  Before that, I made a 6 inch square frame to get my feet wet wtih.  I'm using 5mm Habotai silk from Dharma Trading and butyrate dope and thinner from an aircraft supply house.  I've been using the dope thinned 1:1 for the entire process.  I put 2-3 coats of thinned dope on the structure edges, then putting on the silk damp and going around the edge to tack it on, then covering the whole surface for each coat.  I'm finding it's taking something like 8-10 coats to get the finish shiny as I'm told it should be and it does tend to run some (probably my bad painting technique).  Should I be using the dope 1:1 thinned throughout the process?  It just seems this is an excessive number of coats.