I will never again ride on a shop-glued tubular, perhaps with the exception of Daimo at the Service Course, but you pay big $ for that type of service. Every single rolled tub experience I've had was when a shop glued. The three day process is probably overkill for road tires but for CX it is essential. And the consequences of a rolled tub can range from DNFing to
recreating the Belocki incident. If you passed first grade art class, you can glue a tubular following this process. My preference is to use the tubes of mastik and acid brushes as you can squeeze the glue directly onto the surface and the brush is just for spreading it. I've found the following tips to be a massive help:
1) get a set of cheap tubular rims and cover the rim beds it with blue masking tape. Wipe the top of the tape clean.
2) Scrape the base tape (if latex coated) and clean off all excess debris (the edge of a file is the best tool for this). Shopvac is good to get up the goobers/dust.
3) Install your tubulars on these rims for a couple of days pumped up to >100 psi.
4) Apply black electrical tape to one of the brake tracks of your intended wheel set. Clean the rim surface.
5) From this point on, you need to wear gloves and keep things clean.
5) Remove the tires from your stretcher rims, apply a thin coat. Squeeze the mastik in little lines onto the base tape of the partially inflated tub and spread it out with the brush, just until it changes color. Keep it off the sidewalls you slob. Once it is dry, tires go back onto the stretcher rims.
6) Thin coat onto the rim (you can use your trainer in place of a truing stand to hold the tire). Don't worry if some gets into the spoke holes. Same thing, squeeze a line of mastik out right onto the rim, spread with the brush, working in ~10" sections. This avoids the dreaded mastik spider webs.
7) # of times you repeat this up up to you. I've been told that a few thin coats is better that a couple of thick coats. I do 3 on the rim and 2 on the tire (before mounting, the tire glue can be dry, just hit the rim with a thin coat to activate the mastik), but that is up to you. It is important to keep the tires on the rim between glue applications, it shrinks the base tape.
8) Because you prepared and stretched, the mounting step is now easy and low risk. Rushing to this step is what results in botched glue jobs. CONFIRM THE TREAD IS POINTED THE CORRECT DIRECTION, mount the tire (with dry glue) from the wheel side with the electrical tape on it, there are a bunch of youtube vids showing the right way to do this.
9) Glued wheel is then checked for straightness (after partial inflation), you can eyeball this or do it on the trainer/truing stand.. You now have to frantically straighten the tire on the rim (while the glue is still soft), but because it was pre-stretched probably went on very close to straight and you can correct if it is not perfect. You will never get a hand made tubular (FMB, dugast) perfectly straight.
It sounds like a lot, but once you've got the tools and have run through it once, it is not that much contact time, just lots of time between steps. I like to pick a rest week before the season and will get up early and spend 30 minutes for 3 days doing it. This is not a good process to rush or half ass.