Experience is what you get just after you need it.

Or experience is what you get when you do something wrong....

Either way, now, I'm pretty good at dealing with poly-sulphide bedding. Now that the four coamings are in place:

I know that if the tape is too close to the wood for the radius of your bead, then the bedding will be quite thick on the tape and you leave a nice groove when you pull the tape out.

I know that for the brand I used, 5-8 minutes is about right to lift the tape, sooner and it's still to runny. Later and it tears.

I know that you should use 2" masking tape, not 1", as the bedding will surely get out over the 1" tape when you are not paying attention to something.

I know that you should not try to fix any problem once you have lifted the masking tape.

I know all these things now.

It would have made for a better job if I'd known them all at the start.

The unfortunate thing is that reading about these things only helps a little. There is no way to learn that is quite as good as Experience.

Also you will find that the notched spreaders used for spreading tiling cement are prefect for spreading bedding compound.

You can get them for close to nothing, which is good, 'cause I for one would not want to try to clean the poly-sulphide off them.

What was that old line? Son, if you're going to insist on making all your own mistakes, you'd better get cracking, you have a lot of work to do.