I picked up the sliding canopy rails, intending to reinstall them on the fuselage, but then I noticed that the slot for the canopy lock was kind of rough-looking by my current standards. Not a surprise, since I made this slot long before I owned a milling machine. So, I cranked up the mill and went to work cleaning up the slot:
There, that's better – properly parallel edges and uniform corners:
Then I took the canopy rails to a local metal finishing place to have the extrusion marks polished out, and a satin finish put on. Fast forward a few weeks and they turned out looking really nice, although it's hard to tell in photos.
I'm trying to avoid "aircraft looking" hardware in the cockpit where I can help it, so instead of the usual AN507 screws, I attached the rails to the fuselage with stainless hex screws that I picked up from McMaster. No worries about strength, since these are actually rated for slightly higher tensile strength than the recommended screws.
Now the canopy is back on, hopefully for a good long time.
To keep the plexiglass from getting damaged, I protected the first few inches with a layer of 20 mil PVC tape, and put a plastic sheet over the rest:
