I decided to have the canopy rails bead blasted and clear anodized. You can see them in the bottom of this picture.
Hopefully this will hold up over time, but for now it looks nice! Gives the aluminum a bit of surface texture and no glare. Sort of the same appearance as my MacBook Pro laptop.
While I have a tip-up, when I first built my -9 I painted the top rails and they got all scratched up. While I had the plane home putting the new engine on it, I stripped the paint off and left it that way. No more scratches.
My experience with bead blasting aluminum is that it will remove the protective alclading which could eventually lead to corrosive issues down the road.
Have heard of soda blasting being less of a concern to alclad.
I've done both. I painted the first set of rails on the Doll, and in time, they became chipped and unattractive.
I wanted to change the method of locking the canopy half open so I ordered a new set of rails. I decided to polish the new set, and I am very happy with the results. After another eight years they look great. I polish them once a year, just prior to Oshkosh.