Tonight I started preparing the canopy for the outer fiberglass layups. That is – sanding the excess adhesive off and roughing the surface of the canopy. Here is how things look before prep work began. First I removed and the reinstalled each cleco to free them from the adhesive. About 80% were easy but a few were pretty well bonded and took some careful wiggling to remove.

To remove the excess adhesive the best technique I found was a small 6 inch this sanding block. But boy, this adhesive is tough to sand. It’s at least as hard as flox to sand, if not worse!

In about 2 hours I was able to get about 2/3 of the canopy prepped. I also reamed each cleco hole (1/8 reamer – same size as it was drilled) to clean out the adhesive and hand countersunk each slightly. If my air hose didn’t have a hole in it, I would have cleaned them out and applied adhesive to each, so I will do that next session.

The adhesive rivets came out great. Almost all of them flush with maybe only two or three that had any type of indent or missing material and those were very minor.