On my TF Giant Mustang, I've custom built a sliding mechanism for a sliding canopy. I'm adding Styrene formers inside the canopy, but while assembling my sacrificial test canopy, I wasn't happy with the canopy cutting process.

What I did:

- Rough cut the split canopy with scissors/x-acto
- Bonded Styrene former to one half, leaving a bit of extra overhang stock
- Sanded the overhang down to be flush with the Styrene former
- Clamped the matching Styrene former (for the other half of the canopy) to the one just assembled, using 1/8" plywood spacers (so I don't glue the two formers together)
- Bonded the second Styrene former to the other canopy half, leaving a slight overhang
- Sanded it down to be flush

Doing this, I have very nice fitting canopy halves, but I what I didn't like was sanding a total of about 1/8" stock of the canopy- maybe I'm too picky.

Anyway, has someone come up with a method to do this without wasting material? Another idea I had was to bond the two formers to the canopy before cutting with some very thin spacer to prevent gluing to each other, and then cutting the canopy right between the formers. The problem is I can't think of a way to cut a precise line between the formers- an x-acto blade doesn't cut easily and doesn't stay on track very well.

Any ideas?