Yeah the dowel rods helped a ton - definitely a life saver. I picked that tip off of another thread somewhere on here. They stop any premature sticking. When your working with large pieces of turf, it's sometimes tough to keep track of the latter half while your trying to stick the other end down. You just remove them and continue working along.
As for time...it took me awhile. Since it was my first full job, I went pretty slowly. The rails probably took at least an hour/hour and a half apiece to place and cut(including two coats of DAP and drying times. The floor of the tray took the longest because of the pad shaping and test fits. Probably another 3 hours at least with the padding, turf, and dry times. It was a pretty full weekend job with all the prep work (deturf/chopping tray up/defoam/refoam/re-glass) I was always concerned that I would not be able to stretch the turf far enough to make the required bends/seams. I was amazed at how much the heat helped.
