I only intended to get the canopy ready for the glue today, but after it was all taped up I went ahead and glued it up. The taping went well but there were problems later after gluing. The gluing is a two step process, you put on one layer of glue and let it set up for 24 hours then you remove the clamps and spacers and do the cosmetic layer filling in the void where the spacers were located. To help get a nice line two layers of tape are used, you do the first layer of glue and remove the tape and let it set up then you don’t have to re-tape because the bottom layer of tape is there. The difficulty I ran into was I used different brands of tape; the adhesion of the top layer of tape was stronger than the bottom layer so when I tried to pull the top layer off both layers came off at the same time. I think if I had used one type of tape this would not have been a problem. The other difficulty is some of the tape came off the canopy in the rear section as I was gluing which made a mess. Also deciding where to put the tape line is off a bit, I had a lot of excess glue that came off with the tape or stayed. The good thing is the glue will not stick to anything that did not have primer on it, so after it is set up you can pull it right off. I will have to cut off the excess with a razor blade before the cosmetic coat.
I was time compressed; in hind sight I should have done it in sections. The cleaner has to be on for 30 min before you apply the primer and it is only good for 2 hours, so after waiting the 30 minutes you only have 1.5 hours to prime, clamp and glue the entire canopy. I think it would have been possible to clean and prime with the canopy in place, so I should have done things in 2-3 stages. It worked out I was applying the last bit of glue right at the end of the 2 hours. If I had done it in sections I could have worked out some of my issues working with the glue but instead I was pressed into continuing. We will see how well I can cover the imperfections with the cosmetic layer.
Marked tape lines and made small spacers
Canopy is set above frame to clean and prime. This minimized movement with primer on the parts
