Well here we are two weeks since the last entry. I started sanding to previously laid up fiberglass skirt and just wasn't happy with the shape at all. I had a hump on one side aft that was the result of a slightly proud canopy frame in that area, combined with the edge of the .030 vinyl that I was using to bridge the gap between fuselage and canopy. Sigh, after spending a few hours sanding this down to see if I could live with it, I just bit the bullet, scrapped it, and started over. The new and improved plan had me looking for something thinner that the previously sourced .030 vinyl to cover up the gap between the canopy and the fuselage so that I could build up wet plies in place without excessive sagging. Thought that perhaps poster board or craft paper might work so I went to Michaels craft store and discovered, wonder of wonders, they have mylar sheets like engineering prints used to come on in the 1960's. They're with the poster boards and are listed as "plastic posterboard" I picked up two sheets in case I needed extra, but one sheet was enough. to do the entire canopy skirt area with a bit left over. It's only about .010" thick, and a bit more floppy than the vinyl I tried first, but by stretching packing tape tight and working it down wit a squeegee to get the air bubbles out I ended up with a nice flat surface to work with that seems to have minimum variations. Once that was all prepped, I laid up I think 4 layers of 7.5 oz glass, they a skim coat of flox, then a 5th layer, then a layer a peel ply. The next day I sanded to a rough shape, then laid up another 3 layers of cloth, then a skim coat of micro, then two coats of neat epoxy. The goal was to end up with a surface thick enough that I could get a final surface finish without getting into any of the plies to a significant degree. As we all know, this kind of layup gets opaque when you sand it, so threw was a certain order of operations that made sense at this point. After, it was good and hard, I transferred all my edge cut lines that were visible on the tape underneath, then popped the layup off the plane and trimmed the edges. This was done by cutting to just outside the lines with my 90* die grinder using the same abrasive cutoff disk that vans sent to cut the canopy. I final sized it by sanding up to the line with a sanding block and some 80 grit. I took several iterations to get this just right, trying it back on the airplane after each. The most critical area for me was where the lower fwd edges joggle up to match the canopy rails. There can't be any overlap here of the skirts to the canopy decks or they will rub and bind up as you open the canopy, but if you cut too much away, you'll have a big ugly gap there thats going to be difficult to seal up. So in that area you have to take away just enough, but not too much, if that makes any sense at all. I wasn't happy with the fit between the doghouse area and the plastic plug thats supposed to side on the aft canopy rail and close up the air gaps back there. Since I'm doing this out of fiberglass and can make it any shape I want, I scrapped the aluminum doghouse form I had used and after appropriately protecting with tape and turtlewax for mold release, I filled the gaps with a slurry of flox. I had also prepped the area around the oil filler door on the upper cowl, so before my leftover epoxy started to set, I did a layer around the door to bring it up close to flush. Later on I finished that out with a skim coat of micro. Waste not want not, but more on that in a separate entry. Once the skirt was cut to size and the doghouse area was fitting the way I wanted, I drilled through into the holes that already existed in the canopy frame side rails while I could still see them. I then clecoed the skirt in place, made sure everything was still taped up good so that I wouldn't scratch it, and sanded everything to final shape with a couple of sanding blocks with 80 grit. At this point I've got everything just about perfect I think, although it's hard to tell until you gt some primer on it, because the sanding marks tend to hide low spots etc. I have to accompany my wife on a multi-day work trip at this point, so when I get back I'll hit this all with a finer grit finishing paper and then some high build primer to finish it off. Boy I hope I'm about done with this.