<<Why doesn't anyone use PVA and mold wax?>>
I suspect it would be required if working with an honest-to-gosh female mold, in particular if it didn't have much draft angle and you wanted to use it again.
For a one-shot moldless composite part (layups on the outside of a form), ordinary slick packing tape, a little turtle wax, and (like Mike said) some compressed air has always got it done.
<<How long did it take you? I've always been curious about whether it's best to do a few layups...let dry...come back later...do a few more... etc. >>
Bob, you can do a few layups, allow cure (or partial cure to a knife trim stage), then do more. However, generally you would only do so when the part required it; perhaps a flox core in a trailing edge or uni roving inside BD skins. If you stop in the middle of a part to allow cure, use peel ply so you don't need to halt two days for full cure and then sand, sand, sand before subsequent bonding.
However, it is usually best to plan your time and do the entire layup at once.
For a strip layup like canopy fairings, consider wetting out fabric between two clear plastic sheets. Use slow hardener for working time. Lay down a plastic sheet, neatly stack as many as 4 plies of dry fabric, pour on a batch of mixed resin, and stack on another plastic sheet. Work the resin through all the cloth with a squeegee, or better yet, a grooved roller, pushing excess resin off to the sides along with the air bubbles. When you have it all properly saturated (and consolidated, no excess resin please), use a felt tip pin to draw the exact shape of the desired layup on the top plastic sheet, then cut through all the layers of plastic and glass with a "pizza cutter" rotary knife. Peel the plastic off one side; pull it 180 degrees back on itself so as to not disturb the wet fabric. Now position the layup exactly where you want it, complete with plastic on one side. Stipple it down with a dry brush, then carefully peel off the top plastic. It might need a little more stippling with a wet brush to remove any remaining air bubbles. I would add peel ply at this point (wet it out with more resin); you're gonna be adding surfacing filler later and again, the peel ply eliminates the need for a lot of pre-bond sanding.
Two nice things about the method. First, it is neat and tidy. Until you cut through the wetted glass and plastic, you didn't even come in contact with wet resin. Second, you can run the pizza cutter along a steel straightedge, which means your layup has a neat edge, and is full thickness along that edge. The neat edge can be positioned with accuracy along the tape line on your plexiglass.
Don't try the above with high-viscosity epoxy or in a cold shop. High viscosity makes it hard to peel the plastic without disturbing the layups. Works fine with West.
I've attached a photo borrowed from the Showplanes manual; nice illustration of positioning a wet strip layup.
Hope this helps.
