Trag, search the forum for CC mods. This has been covered a lot. There are some pretty sophisticated ones. I have not heard about vacuum formed Plexi either, but you do not need it for the CC, which used a Trinitron tube. A flat piece of plexi will fit nicely into the opening with only a slight horizontal curve, in fact one of the examples on the forum depicts that solution and it looks great.

The vacuum formed plexi idea intrigues me for all of the other shadow mask CRTs in the other compacts though ... the only solution that has been developed so far is cutting the front off of a glass CRT with a diamond cutting-wheel Dremmel tool, and removing the phosphor. It works, but it's a messy and difficult process.