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To backdrill the lowermost row of holes through the triangle gusset arms and through the
skin, I used some duct tape and a scrap piece of plywood to pull the skin tight. Just
tape it up in this position...
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...and lever it up. Nice and tight.
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Time to transfer the cut lines from the longerons to the forward canopy skin. There is a
vertex at the downward bend of the longerons, so first I used a scale to transfer the
horizontal longeron line to the skin.
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Similarly, I used a reference edge to transfer the down-sloping portion of the longeron
to the canopy forward skin. Here, I have a piece of aluminum with a nice, straight edge
referenced to the longeron. I'll slip the canopy skin down between this piece and the
side of the fuselage.
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...thusly.
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Trimmed and filed the excess material off. Still needs a bit of filing, but looking pretty good.
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...same on the other side.
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The skin needed a bit of additional curl, so I used this scrap of oak banister and a soft
mallet to pound a little bit more curl into the skin near the edge.
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Also, I could tell that the bend I had made previously needed extended somewhat towards
the forward end. Using the male bending tool and mallet, I carefully extended the bend.
This actually worked really well. I think that this bend could be done in its entirety
using this approach.
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Okay, it's really fitting very well. A bit of filing left to go.
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Nice fit to the longeron. You can see that I need to file a bit more to allow a bit of
clearance.
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