I started this a few days ago, but when you work with fiberglass there is a lot of down time where you're waiting for epoxy to dry so you can sand most of it off and start over :)

Nothing new here, I laid out trim lines on yellow frog tape, covered everything with mylar packing tape and gave it a healthy dose of turtle wax as mold release insurance.

I then laid up multiple plies of 8.5 oz cloth taking care to include extra plies around the hoop. This area takes some abuse with the canopy sliding under it as well as potentially people grabbing that area to climb in and out. Vans print suggests you should shoot for a .080" thickness in this area and an overhang between 1/4"-1/2". I ended up with about .10" thickness and split the difference on the overhand and went with 3/8".

I gave this a skim coat of micro, then pulled it off the plane and rough cut to size with an abrasive disc in my dotco. after that, I crept up on the final dimension with 60 grit on a long sanding block.

I've got a few low spots in the fwd radius and I wasn't happy with the way the aft corners looked. They have to stick out a bit back there in order for the side skirts to nest under them when closed, and the lump that induces looked funny.

I added another skim coat of micro today and will attempt to get this to a more aesthetically pleasing shape tomorrow.

The part that goes from the aft corners fwd around the windshield base is only about .070" I originally reasoned that since the sika is holding the windshield on there's nothing structural about this it just needed to be thick enough to not have the paint crack over time, but I'm now rethinking.

Keith Rea told me today that his aft hoop was originally about .10" thick and he cracked it getting in and out during phase 1. He had to add a couple more plies before it went to paint. Based on that, and the fact that I'm trying to reshape this a bit, I think once I get a final shape I'm happy with I'll go with a minimum of one more ply over the whole thing. That will beef it up a bit and also encapsulate the micro layer.

To be continued!