Monday, July 14, 2014

Canopy Clear Up



I was going to start masking the LaGG-3's canopy.  Noticing some dust and fingerprints I decided clean them off with a quick swipe with a brush dipped in rubbing alcohol.  This was a mistake (I love understated British humor :-) ).  The canopy fogged, and I nearly panicked.  Ok, I did panic.  But then I calmed down and got to work fixing it.


The picture really doesn't show how bad it was.

About an hour to an hour and a half of sanding with 600, 4,000, and 12,000 grit sanding sticks and buffing with a cotton swab got it to this point.  This was much better but still a little opaque.



Then a dip in Future got it clearer.  I took the canopy back off to let it dry under cover for a full 24-48 hours.


I'll re-evaluate once the canopy is fully dry if a second coat of Future is needed.

In some ways this is funny, since historically some LaGG-3 pilots removed their canopies because the manufacturing quality of the Soviet perspex  was so bad.

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