February 11, 2007 - Aft Canopy
The shop was totally trashed with every flat surface covered with tools and trash, and plastic "snow" all over the floor and stuck to airhoses and extension cords.  When it gets this bad, I start feeling sort of overwhelmed about the project in general. 

So I spent the first hour or so of this Sunday cleaning up the shop.  I put all the tools in their proper places and swept the floor clean of plastic snow.  It was time well spent.  Then I felt ready to continue on with the project. 

The first step was to make the 5/8" wide, .025" thick  reinforcers for the leading edge of the aft top skin.  The skin is on top, then the aft canopy, then the reinforcer.  But the skin curves so I had to cut the strips out of .025 1 1/2" wide stock.  Not hard, just time consuming. 
Then I had to match-drill the strips to the skin.  First to #30, then both skin and strips to #27, for the 6-32 screws. 
Now I could dimple the holes with the #6 dimple die. 
I made the reinforcing strip edges all nice and smooth. 
All that is left for the aft canopy at this point is to bolt and screw it in.  But that will have to wait until the aft top skin is riveted tot he fuse. 
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