Due to the growing awareness of the need for sustainability and conservation of natural resources, demand for lightweight, high performance composites is increasing. To date, mechanical fasteners remain the primary means to join composites. Because of their weight and creation of local stress concentrations, interest in substituting conventional joints with adhesively bonded joints is rising. However, typical adhesive joints also experience stress localization and failure due to inhomogeneous stress distributions. One possible solution is the application of functionally graded adhesives, which enable more homogeneous stress distributions. The aim of this study is the use of gamma irradiation to create functionally graded epoxy adhesives due to the crosslinking effects of such radiation on epoxies. Here the diglycidyl ether of Bisphenol A (DGEBA) has been cured with various hardeners containing carbon-carbon double bonds known to be sensitive to free radical-mediated reactions induced by gamma radiation. In the first step, the curing process is purely thermal, and yields a fully cured epoxy network analogous to a conventional resin. The high concentration of double bonds ensures that such networks remain susceptible to further crosslinking via gamma irradiation. The use of strategically employed shielding, readily formed from highly tungsten-filled polymer, enables the creation of gradients in dose, extent of radiation crosslinking and materials properties. Graded specimens are characterized by tensile testing using digital image correlation, dynamic mechanical analysis and molecular spectroscopy. These initial efforts provide insights into the relationship between shielding design and the resultant structure and properties gradients, as well as the resolution achievable via this approach.