The tube won't go back into the bottom (snicker).
I finished re-jetting, cleaning the carbs, replacing the air filter, and fixing the cam chain tensioner on my 750K7 with little to no trouble and was feeling pretty good about myself so I decided to go ahead and tackle the fork seals while I was at it. Terrible idea.
They were leaking to the point that the lower tubes constantly had oil and grime on them from fork oil running down the backs, and I'd occasionally find a few drips on the ground. I got the first tube disassembled fine until it came time to pull the seal out of the lower tube. With some careful (read: careless) work with a screwdriver and hammer, I finally managed to get the seal out. I tried drilling a couple tiny holes in the seal, inserting a wood screw, and prying slowly (as I saw recommended here), but the screw just sheared and ended up inside of the seal.
I got everything cleaned up and went to put the upper tube back into the lower tube, but it wouldn't go. There seemed to be some interference that wouldn't let it go. I cleaned it off again, dremeled the tiniest chamfer in the inside rim of the lower tube, and made sure that both the inside surface of the lower tube and the outside surface of the upper tube were smooth and free of any burrs or nicks. I coated everything with some fresh ATF and tried again. It was the tiniest bit easier, but still got stuck after I got about an inch of it in.
Where did I go wrong? The Honda manual doesn't go into a ton of depth as far as this process was concerned, and I've already swapped seals on my Nighthawk without issue, so I'm not sure what I could have done. Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Innuendo?