Brief Description: Cut the flanges off the canopy bubble.
My brother came over about 10:00 AM and we went to the garage to cut the bubble flanges off. I had located the latch hole placement by placing and fitting the frame the night before. I had also trimmed some of the protective plastic sheet and taped the edges to keep the small pieces of hot plastic off the bubble while cutting. The first problem encountered was that I did not have a good arbor setup for my die grinder to hold the fiber blade. We jumped into my pickup and headed to Home Depot and wouldn't you know, they didn't have an abor that would work in the 1/4" die ginder. We went to Sears and they gave us the same story. We went back home and found some washers that we drilled out to fit my gimpy arbor and it worked just fine. We had wasted an hour and a half and a couple gallons of diesel for nothing. Oh well, it was time for lunch.
After consuming a sandwich, we finally started cutting. I had on a long sleeve shirt with a face shield and cap while Clark was wearing a T-shirt, face shield and cap. We slung bits of plexiglass all over the garage. Luckily, I had put a sheet over the fuselage. The next problem encountered was that my 16 gallon shop vac (which is 35 years old) started acting up by slowing down and smoking. Clark sanded the canopy bubble edges while I worked on the vac. By the time we cleaned ourselves and the garage, it was almost Happy Hour. We started the happy hour only 15 minutes early. Now how is that for a hard day's work?
We cut the flanges off on the work benches.
These are the flanges.
We set the bubble over the frame just to see how it looked.
