I started out this round of airplane building by sanding down the bottom cowling’s added micro dabs, all over the micro’d areas (no pic)… I then applied one more dab to a divot afterwards.

I also sanded down and then micro’d up the top cowl oil check hatch door.

I don’t know how visible the pin holes are on the surface of the carbon fiber top cowling, but after some fairly aggressive sanding of the epoxy wiped surface, I figured I needed another 2-3 rounds of epoxy wipes.  Either that, or just micro up the entire top cowling… which I didn’t have the desire to do.

On the first round of these Phase II epoxy wipes for the top cowling, I added a bit of West 410 filler to the epoxy—mainly to add color to see how effectively I was getting the epoxy down into the pin holes (pic 1).  It looked like it was working, so after that I switched to straight West epoxy again for the next 2 (and final) epoxy wipes (pic 2).  I then left the once again epoxy wiped top cowl to cure overnight.

In between the rounds of epoxy wipes on the top cowling, I chucked up a 3/8″ end mill and “manually” (using the control pendant) milled out the bottom of the slot floor on the canopy latch handle.  I was able to get it down even with the handle (bottom of pic) and also eliminate the multiple drill-tip divots from my clearance holes.

I have to say that I’m very happy with how this task turned out.

And here’s the machined canopy latch handle.  I did another task on the mill by drilling the mounting holes, then tapping those threads to accept 8-32 screws.

I then attached the handle to the canopy latch handle frame and mounted it in the bird. Not surprisingly, it did require a bit of judicious sanding in a few spots for it to fit comfortably, but after 10 minutes of fine-tuning it fit a treat!  Here it is in the closed position.

And here we have it in the open position.  Again, I’m very pleased with how this handle turned out so far.

Since the canopy latch handle has been a work in progress for about 7 years now, I decided to make a video showing the machining of it out of actual aluminum!  Enjoy:

I’ll continue pressing forward on both top and bottom cowlings, as well as the canopy latch system in my push to get this bird done!