Tonight I finished drilling holes in the canopy, and then final-sized all of the holes to #27,
I only had one scary moment, when for some reason one of the pilot holes I drilled in the aft edge didn’t line up with the pre-punched hole I was shooting for. However, I was able to enlarge the pilot hole slightly to get it to line up, and then the final-sizing took care of the problem, leaving a nice round hole in the right place.
More drilling tonight. I’m going slowly, but so far everything is working out nicely.
Match drilling the side rails takes some care. Because the aluminum rail is pressed up against the Perspex, and there are no pilot holes, the Perspex drill bit doesn’t completely exit the Perspex before contacting the aluminum rail. Switching to a regular drill bit and drilling through the aluminum rail requires drilling through the last few millimeters of Perspex with a regular drill bit, which risks a crack on the backside of the Perspex. I don’t expect to find any issues, but I’ll carefully inspect it when I disassemble in a subsequent step.
The wooden structure inside the cockpit is providing great support for drilling the canopy rails.
Tonight I drilled the first set of holes in the canopy. Everything went well and the holes were as accurate as I could have hoped for.
I made a small sighting tool by bending a piece of aluminum to 90 degrees. I used this to sight a spot on the canopy that was directly over the hole in the underlying frame, then marked the spot with a sharpie. Then I taped it to the side of the hole to help me keep the drill square. Then I lined up the drill on the spot, checked the placement, and drilled the hole.
Life has gotten busy recently! Tonight I finally finished trimming the canopy, and got everything ready to start drilling the holes.
I used a ratchet strap to hold weight on the front of the canopy, and rigged up some blocks of wood on the inside to backstop the holes being drilled through the side rails.
I plan to start drilling tomorrow, as it’s late and I need to get some sleep tonight.
