Doug,

Glad to hear that you've decided to give water borne paint a try. It's a little trickier to deal with than solvent based paint but worth it in my opinion. You might also want to consider water borne "varnishes" like Varathane or Minwax to embed the cloth next time. They are very user friendly and clean up and sand easily. Takes a few more passes and coats and is not quite as hard as resin but it's also lighter. It can be also be easily brushed on.

Anyway, I'm advocating something I haven't tried fully but I intend to on my next paint job. Sealing the balsa is paramount though with stuff like polycrilic. I finished a huge pine table with it once and I was very satisfied with the results. Not good as an outer nitro proof layer however. For that I plan to stick with catalyzed urethane CC - excellent stuff, especially over water borne paint.

Looking forward to seeing the progress!

David