I’ve tried to take every opportunity to shed weight out of the airplane. The canopy latch was a solid bar of aluminum that is 5/8″ thick, so it was fairly heavy (nearly 10oz). I stopped by the TechShop to try to lighten the part a bit. You can see here that I machined out most of the structure. It’s now under 6 oz, so I saved about 1/4 lb. This is the bottom side, so the top looks untouched.
I was having a hard time keeping the latch handle clamped down since it’s such an awkward shape. While machining the inside edge, the part shifted and I almost cut through one of the most visible faces. It took nearly 4 hours to do this, almost half of which was spent trying various methods to clamp the parts down to keep them from moving. 1 oz per hour is easily the most time I’ve spent trying to save weight on any part of the airplane.
I also masked off around part of the floor that needs to be painted to match the carpet since parts of it is visible around the seats. I’ll paint this first thing in the morning…
