It's been almost a month that I have been messing with this canopy frame. It drives me nuts to say the leasT;
Still I can't be happy with how it looks. Looking from the front I still have this bow down. Playing around in various places I can get the bow to be equal, but then my side bows turn up awefull with high variance between left and right.
I ended up putting the frame on equally sized wood blocks to see how it was dancing around on the blocks and tried to get them equal again.
But as I do that, you see the right bow jumping down again. I decided to send a question to Vans support to see if they have any tips or tricks.
The front bow look pretty ok so far but I was afraid of having cut too much off the forward legs. You can still use spacers in the rollers if this happens but it's not ideal. For now it looks like I will just get to the required distance.
The image below shows the process of measuring the height in relation to the top fuselage skin using a 0.064 inch scrap piece and a ruler.
The height of the front bow is close but not perfect. Later I found out that this is really irrelevant right now and the least of your worries.
Here are my current measurements on the side bows front and back. Difference is a bit mor than 1/8" but it's the shape of the rear bow that worries me the most for the moment.
Bending will go on for the next days. I'm taking this a little at a time as it's nerve cracking.