Today’s job was to seal off the canopy rail with a 4 ply layup now that the hinges and hardpoints are in place. I’d checked a few days ago that this layup would still be within range of the canopy closing OK.

After some thought I went for 1 ply of BID then 2 plies of UNI then a final ply of BID. While this is not the plans layup order it does seal the top and bottom in BID which is what I feel will work best.

First up I made flox corner troughs and some glass to glass areas at the outside along with a bit of a general clean up of the foam and edges with transitions in mind.

A couple of hours was then spent cutting out the foil and glass and planning the layups. It needs a bit of thought or you get into it with wet epoxy to find you are short a piece of glass. Been there.

I microed the blue foam and then made a batch of flox for the troughs. This was quite a lot of epoxy and I always think about the weight. I do need a strong canopy frame so I kept mixing the stuff and applying it.

The four plies were all done using the foil method and pretty straight forward now. The technique after a lot of preparation works very well for this type of layup. I do a lot of work with my gloved fingers getting air out and smoothing things down.

I did all the sides together so it was eight strips of glass with one side having pieces cut to size between the hinges and the ends and the other just full length.

This is after the four plies. I transitioned up on the hinge side. On the left side I did three plies on the flat and just one of BID that was wide enough to also cover the full size lip. As the canopy sits well here I didn’t want to add too much thickness or it just may not sit well later. On the hinge size I will have to figure something out to make it all flush there. Again all this is due to the canopy being too wide. I’ll make it work somehow.

All done and peel ply in place, quite a long day in the end working from around midday to well after 8pm.