Working on the canopy has become my least favorite part of the project. It just seems to never end. Instead of doing any serious work on the plexiglass, I’m just trying to figure out where I can make progress in other areas.
I countersunk the holes and deburred the edges of the F-788 Gusset.
I countersunk the holes in the aft canopy that interface with the skin. The trick to getting a good finish was to go slow with the countersinking tool. If you go too fast, you can start to melt the plexiglass.
Lastly, I started fabricating the optional backing strip. This part gets clamped up between the aft canopy and the skin. Vans does not provide this material and it seems like a lot of builders just skipped it since it was “optional”. Fortunately for me, I had a large piece of unused sheetmetal because I decided to replace one of the bottom skins of my wing. It was a ton of work to cut away all that sheetmetal. I used a combination of sheetmetal cutters, a dremel, a file, and sandpaper.
As you can see in the image below, I just matched the curvature of the aft skin.
