Cutting canopy, step 2

Ouch! Another 7 months have passed since my last post…
So, what happened this time? Well, I started up as a freelance aircraft technician, which has taken up quite a bit of my time.
I have however spent an hour or two once in a while during the last couple of months…

After my last post back in august, I was pretty much ready to make the big cut, separating the canopy into the fixed rear window and the tip up canopy part. To have a good line to follow while cutting, I traced the split line from the roll bar to the canopy, then made a ‘channel’ with two rows of masking tape. I put on 5 layers of tape, in order to have some depth so as to work as a cutting guide, and also protect the new canopy edges should the cutting disc slip.

I then removed the canopy, and taped the lower edges together to fix the canopy better while cutting.

I also put the canopy on some pieces of wood to raise it a bit from the floor, in order to cut the lower edges.

After cutting the first 20cm or so on each side, I carefully moved the piece of wood backwards under the cut, so it would support both halves of the canopy once cut.

I made sure to tape the canopy sections together, during the cutting process.

And the canopy is split on two…

After carefully finishing and rounding the edges, I could put the forward canopy back on the canopy frame; this time behind the ‘ears’ of the forward canopy skin.

The fit isn’t all that bad, but I do have to enlarge the gap a bit to get it perfect.

I removed the canopy skin, marked a triangular slot, drilled and deburred it…

That helped a great deal!

To copy this shape to the left side, I traced it onto a piece of paper…

..then clecoed the paper to the other side and marked the cut.

I’m pretty happy with the result so far. The canopy still need some fine tuning, but I I’m going to finish the canopy frame before doing the final adjustment.

Yesterday I also did the first rough trim of the aft cabin window. I marked the canopy about 1½” from the skin edge. In the end it will be 1¼”, but I would like to have a bit of extra play, as the window will probably need a bit of adjustment to match the aft edge of the forward canopy glas.

Cut the canopy, this was the last of the big cuts. From now on it will be minor adjustments.

Aft window back on the fuselage. It will of course go under the skin finally, but for now this is a good place to store it while finishing the canopy frame.

So, to finish the canopy frame, I need to prepare and install these canopy reinforcements. It will be nice working with aluminium again.. 🙂

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