Glad you guys like it. Thanks for the comments.
Yeah, I had a solid fuselage, which has more shrinkage than the canopy, so the two never looked right together. Also I wanted this kit to improve on the V3 canopy. Having a production-lineage fuselage, an opportunity was presented to get the best canopy yet done on an X-wing replica, for with these canopies 'tis the fuselage that makes the canopy' since the canopy geometry is absolutely dictated by the fuse geometry.
I've never scratch-built anything before so this was a bit of an adventure for me ( it may be only a coupla bars, Ralphee, but this was still difficult stuff for me, lol!). I basically drew round the kit canopy sides onto thin (0.5 mm, I think) styrene, cut them out, then held them at the desired angle in the fuse with lumps of blu tac. Then I took measurements of the gap between them in order to derive the shape for the upper plane. I cut out the upper plane from styrene, cut out the window pane too, then tacked the whole lot in situ again with blu tac. Then I applied superglue where I could. The substance of the bars and the other walls of each bar I made with miliput. Probably I should have put some thin brass rod in there, but like a knobhead I didn't once think of that!
It's not perfect; the port vertical strut slopes forward even more than the kit part. This is caused by the fuse asymmetry of course, but is more exacerbated because I made the canopy top perfectly perpendicular to the fuse instead of slightly wonky. I can correct this by filing away at the forward-leaning strut, though of course its shape will be compromised. Interestingly this seems to be what they did with that strut on the Red 5 canopy. That strut is made from two very unparallel lines indeed!
Joe, here are a couple more pics. Y'see in the first one it looks slightly too tapered - too wide at the back, maybe. Anyway, I like it very much on the whole. I definitely prefer it to the V3 canopy, the EFX and what I was getting with the kit part...