Brief Description: Made small spacers and did a dress rehersal
I cut up some small spacers out of the garden hose and glued them together. I still like using them since they don't compress - I just didn't like having to glue around them in a two-step process. I like the idea of using the small spacers and gluing right over them. No pictures of them tonight but they are roughly 3/16" squares. My previous spacer gap was 3/32" and now it will be 3/16" - the guidance I got from Steve's tutorial said 1/8" was good so my gap will be 50% larger. That, combined with the flexibility of the Sikaflex allows for differential thermal expansion of the canopy and the frame and hopefully will keep the cracks away.
I also did a "dress rehearsal", walking thru the steps and timing how long it will take me to get the clamps on and spacers converted from 3/32" to 3/16" and to get the canopy moved to the work bench. I did it in 25 minutes while looking for things and cutting down some more spacers so the 30 minute window is very achievable. I want to clamp up the canopy while it is on the fuselage so it sits like I want it to. I rigged up some wire to pull the pin out of the slide block so that I can lift the canopy and frame off the fuse when it’s all clamped up. I tested that too and it works like a charm.
