The first part with the airplane is the easy part. You take a sharp knife and a set of screwdrivers, wrenches and elbow grease, mix them all together with a lot of photographs to jog your memory later, and go to work disassembling.
Sometimes Malcolm has to apply a little extra elbow grease ...
Malcolm is a very experienced restorer and I am fortunate to have him working on my airplane.
In this picture the wings and tail surfaces are already off, ailerons, elevators and rudder are uncovered and seem to look pretty good. One thing about old airplanes - you never really know the condition of those parts under the exterior fabric until you expose them to the light of day.
Sometimes the exterior will tell a story of its own - the paint had been top coated at some point and was coming unstuck all over the airframe.
My friend Jim in North Carolina rebuilt the engine just before I bought the airplane and it is a dandy. We have it on a stand in my hangar - away from the hustle and bustle of the maintenance hangar.
The smaller parts are collected .....
Boxed to move to my hangar .....
Where they will be cataloged, inspected and reworked .....
While the big stuff goes through its own process of restoration.
The whole affair is planned to take place over a three or four month time frame ... which means maybe four, maybe five (maybe six) months. There are 1952 technology parts that were part of limited production runs and can't be replaced; they will have to be updated with newer parts, subject to the approval of the FAA. (There will be future tales about this.)
But this is, after all, a love affair. Nobody knows how it will take but we're pretty confident it will turn out well. I'll keep you posted.
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