Making a canopy

[Trevor 25]

Has anyone got suggestions for how to MAKE a cockpit canopy (in this case for a CAP232)? I have read about making them from old 3ltr Coke bottles or from glassfibre, just wondered if anyone has tried and succeeded with any particular method.

[Darren 0]

Club night on Thursday is skills night, seems like a good question to ask?

 

I would think Roger, Peter Shaw or Don would be the people to ask.

 

I did make a few small mouldings a few years ago, you need a plug shaped as required and made perfectly smooth, I think I used epoxy then sanded with wet and dry until it shined. Next is a fair strong base board with a hole cut to match the plug but slightly larger

 

Plastic from an old coke bottle was heated and flattened, then clamped on top of the base. Heated again a lot and the plug (on a stick) pushed into the hole.

 

Took a fair number of attempts to get the plastic to the right temperature so it didn't leave stretch marks, be consistent thickness or burn/hole. Then it stuck to the plug, tried all sorts of things, candle wax etc but never found anything that worked really well.

 

All interesting but an awful lot of work to avoid spending a few quid on one made by someone else. Not sure I could be bothered to go through all that again.

 

Of course, you may get lucky and find a drinks bottle that you can just cut near the bottle neck and it fit

 

Best of luck

[Peter 0]

Trevor

My advice would be to make the plug as detailed by Darren, make sure it is correct size allowing for the thickness of the clear plastic and then take it to Avicraft or send to pete Tidal who will put it in there special machine and hey preto you have a canopy. Avicraft will do it whilst you wait. Trying to do it with old pop bottles etc or even flat sheet is really a hit and miss affair OK for small parts like blisters but not really good for big parts like canopies.

I know some have taken a three litre bottle of coke drink it first!! and if your canopy is not too big you can scribe round and cut a pretty reasonable canopy from the empty bottle.

If I can get to club night I will be happy to show you .

Regards,

Peter

[Trevor 25]

Thanks Peter. Sorry I didn't make it to club night.

I couldn't find a pop bottle big enough (and besides I couldn't face having to drink all that fizz!). I am going to try a couple of different methods I have read about, blue foam mould with fibreglass and a plaster cast and fibreglass. The result doesn't need to be too good, this is just me trying out different construction methods. I will post the results, anything for a laugh

 

Trevor

[Peter 0]

Trevor,

Thanks for the note. I think you will be able to make a canopy from the method you mention. You can get very good glass cloth from Fibretech at Lancing with the resin also. I have recently made some parts for my 1/4 scale longeze using the blue foam and balsa method and then making a mould from artist modelling plaster of paris, it worked well and is very light and strong . However the cost of resin and cloth could be expensive for making one part . However it will come in handy for making other parts such as cowlings which I have produced with this technique. Not much to it just make sure you have no undercuts in your mould etc.

regards

peter