Finish: Canopy and Window. Bent canopy skin. Fixed it too.

On page 38-20, the plans specifically direct us against bending the canopy skin.

With the canopy closed and the F-01471 Forward Top Skin cleco'd into position (left), the gap between the canopy and skin is nice and tight.  Opening the canopy slowly confirmed no interference between the Top Skin and canopy.  However, you can't fully open the canopy with the aft row of clecos in, because it will bend the canopy skin.  So I removed them (right).  It's clear that when the clecos are removed, the F-01455 Sub Panel forward flange sits further aft. That's bad only if you open the canopy in this state.

The problem was that the next day, I forgot I removed that top row of clecos, so upon opening the canopy, the below happened.  Ouch!  This looks bad but is fixable.

To make matters worse, about 2 months later, I had the top skin on with the full row of aft clecos in.  To avoid opening the canopy with those clecos in, I locked the canopy, figuring that a locked canopy would remind me about the clecos.  Well, a few days later, I came into the garage and tried to open the canopy.  "Oh, it's locked," I said obliviously, "I'll just unlock it and open the canopy".  Whoops.  See what I did?  The canopy skin was distorted against the clecos.

Metal shrinker to the rescue.  My friend massaged the skin down...

...and got the skin reasonably close to where it used to be.  It's not perfect, but you really have to look hard to see that it had to be forcibly manipulated back into form.