davidfee

I use peel ply (tight weave dacron fabric) on the bag side of my sandwich panels (wing skins, fuselage parts... flat panels, etc.). I use peel ply when I want to remove excess epoxy, but primarily to result in a bondable surface where panels will be joined, internal parts will be added and so on. The perforated release film leaves a surface much like nonporous film, with the addition of little dots at the location of each perforation.

I don't usually wet-out the peel ply, as that would reduce its ability to wick epoxy out of my layup.

Keep in mind that Rutan was building full scale light aircraft... so the scale of things is a little different. I suspect the strip of peel ply he suggested using would have been wet out to use surface tension to hold it flat. It won't be as flat as a bagged surface though. There's no way around that, so Long-Eze builders do a lot of sanding.

The most "interesting" use I've found for peel ply is to use it as the hinge material in a skin hinge. Cheaper and easier to deal with than Kevlar and works just as well.

-David