Tue 13 December 2005 |
| The canopy frame rear ribs have a tie plate that I re-ordered from VANs. The stock rivet layout clashes with the rib tooling holes so I re-did the layout. I'm also considering using the current front plate as a cover / support for the V shaped gap between the ribs. | 
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| Weather here was about as good as you can get, 25C by mid morning, light 8 knot breeze, clear skies and sunshine. The shed warmed up quickly so we returned to the canopy work. First up was the final countersinking on the rear window front edge. Again nice and slow, the #40 piloted bit worked well into the #36 locations. | 
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| Next was finishing work on the edges of the plexi. Up to this point we have just deburred and used a rough 100 grit finish, now with most of the shaping complete it is time to refine / polish them. I started on the rear edge of the rear window whilst Dad did the sides of the forward canopy. After trying 100 / 240 grit paper by hand, I moved to the air powered palm sander. This worked well, 800 grit was finished by hand and a nice smooth, nick / scratch free edge is the result. | 
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| We want to get the forward edge of the rear window really straight for the canopy join. The clecos alone weren't really holding the window down tight enough so we tapped just 6 locations on the roll bar. | 
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| After tightening the window up 'loosely' we remarked a set distance back and then used the normal green tape marking technique. | 
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| The main band sander plus lots of palm sander work got us close to the line and we progressively polished the edge via 120, 240, 400 and 800 wet and dry. | 
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| Difficult to see from the photo but the result is pretty good. I still might get some fine grit / polishing paste, but functionally this is fine. | 
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| Final step for the day was remounting the rear window and prepping for the forward canopy. Hopefully if the weather holds for a couple of days we can finish the cutting / shaping / edging of all the canopy components. | 
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