Started working on the canopy tonight!! I started with the rear bow.
Photo 1 shows the front and rear bows before working them (these were factory bows).
In Photo 2 I marked the "front" of the REAR bow and the "rear" of the FRONT bow, just to remind me which face was facing into the cockpit while I'm working them.
Various builders offered methods for finalizing the bends of the bows, which mostly included some curved wood screwed to the work table that the bows were bent against. But one builder offered that simply carefully bending with his knee worked just as well. So that's what I tried. And sure enough, as long as you go slow and realize that overdoing it can kink the bow, it works great! I had the bow just about finalized in about a half hour of working it.
While I was working the bend, I was simultaneously cutting off small portions of the ends of the bow to get the length right. I started by cutting about 2-1/2" off each end because even that left a lot of bow left. Then I simply cut from each end, about 1/4" at at time.
To make sure I was centering the bow each time I placed it against the bulkhead I put a piece of tape on the turtle deck and the front windscreen, and put a mark roughly at the top center (photo 3).
A picture of the rear bow in place against the bulkhead is on the next page.
Factory bows
Labeled so I know which way they face into the cockpit.
