Friday I journey over to Airplane Plastics to see Jeff (the owner) and pick up my flat wrap windshield - very exciting. Jeff and Becky are great people and I really like doing business with them, I can see why Van uses them to supply all of the kit canopies. Anyway today was first cut day for the windshield. It was so big I really couldn't even set in place to start trimming so I made a cardboard pattern and marked it onto the plexi. Knowing the compound curve that was already set into the plexiglass may not match my pattern perfectly I left plenty of extra material to be safe. -I started out with the die grinder and the my arbor didn't fit the cutoff wheels supplied with the kit. I tried to open up the center hole and must have gotten it off center as the grinder was jumping up and down on the plexi - not good. I finally resolved that and started some practice cuts to get a feel on the outer edges. I then cut it out. After putting into position I could see I had a lot more trimming to do. I probably made 12 cuts before I ran out of time, but I believe I'm getting closer. It's alittle nerve racking because with the compound shape it's hard to be sure that you aren't screwing things up so I'm only taking off about 1/4" at a time (the height that my sharpie marking the plexi at the spots that are making early contact and need trimmed). I hope my technique isn't flawed.
Here's the raw windshield. It is so big I can't stretch it down into position without risk of breaking
