Success!
I got more out of the fender than I initially thought I would.. Initial weight was 25.59 lbs, after removing the hood spring mount pieces, trimming the fender lip, removing the lip where the inner fender bolts on the front half, and drilling about a dozen lightening holes I ended up at 19.060 lbs, a savings of 6.53 lbs per side!
At this point I really don't see where I could get much more than a few more ounces out of it, unless I removed the rear brace completely. I thought about that one a while, if I removed it I would have to add a support for the fender to keep it from flopping around more than likely, which would very likely be a wash weight wise. So I'm going to stop here and be happy to have found 13.06 lbs of weight reduction for basically free!
Still working on the firewall, but I'm getting closed to finishing up on my to-do list. Sunday I made these aluminum cowl plates to cover up the big holes in the cowl. Since the hood I'm using replaces the OEM cowl cover, it left two big holes at the top that I didn't like the looks of. So, after a lot of surgery to the top of the cowl so the plates could lay flat, and a handful of Dzus brackets I've got some handy dandy covers for it now - and they don't weigh too much.
The area around where the wiper motor used to be had to be split and sectioned, then rewelded in order for the plates to sit flat. Also had to make a piece to fill in a hole near where the left wiper arm was. What looked like simple project turned out to be quite involved, but done now so I can move on to the next project.