Brief Description: Tom Clark fastback - canopy frame
RV-8 canopy. Last night Bruce Cooke (Treasurer, SAA Thames Waikato Chapter, and builder of his own design Avian Adventurer) came over to give me a hand with working out how to do the modifications to the stock Vans canopy frame for the Tom Clark fastback. Bruce was a great deal of help and we (ok, he) came up with a plan. Part of visualising what needed to be done was placing the canopy of the fuselage for reference. Now, I ask you, how cool is that!? :-)
Anyway, fast forward to tonight and I make a start on bending up the canopy frame aft support. I cut a paper template the shape of the F-807 bulkhead upper and glued it to a piece of ¾" board. I then used a piece of tube to get the correct distance from the marked line, drew another line and jigsawed it out.
Next I screwed the forming block down onto the bench. I then marked the center of the tube and began bending slowly, working from the center outwards. Every so often I would screw a smaller block to the bench, holding everything in place while I progressed. It was hard work and even completing the bend around the form wasn't enough. Springback means I will have to bend some more to match the shape exactly. But I'll tackle that another night. I had to stop to organize some grub and then do some after hours work on a customer's network.
