Chris,
I discovered the same thing a while back, that inheritance didn't work quite the way I would have expected.
(I assume that in step 5, when you're changing the font, you're changing it back in your class, and you expect that change to be reflected back on your form, because you never explicitly did an override)
Check out message #
939577. The method I described may not work 100% of the time, depending on your needs, but it might help.
Kevin