chopper man - I must admit that I cannot see why you have these issues.
I had to glue two of these cowls (I changed engine and needed different cut-out) without issue following the instructions.
I just remembered that I didn't used "milled" fibreglass (as I didn't have any at the time), but instead I chopped light fibreglass cloth to small pieces and had them mixed with the Epoxy.

The photo show my first cowl two sides of the "ring". The side that had the bag is clean from glue, and the other side is "lumpy" with the epoxy mixed with cloth.

Eran