Canopy Skirt 1 – initial fitting

05 Jul 2005 Canopy Skirt 1 – initial fitting

The canopy skirt is supposed to be one of the more difficult parts of the project. Now that the canopy is glued on, it’s time to bite the bullet and start on the skirt. One complication with using glue (sikaflex in this case) to attach the canopy is that there are not going to be any holes along the edge of the skirt to cleco it to the canopy. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

First step is to do some initial fitting and start trimming. Many builders have warned not to trim too much too quickly.

Here you can see I’ve put some tape along the edge to mark where I want to trim it. Van’s includes some scratches to give you a suggested trim line.

Here you can see that the back of the skirt does not fit well at all. Wow, that will be a lot of work.

Here’s my first cut. Turned out ok.

Trimmed up the front here, and the top. The sides fit really well.

I started to use some little gaskets to provide a gap between the skirt and the canopy frame. Figured out it’s really not needed.

Using tape to hold the skirts on.