Warbird Information Exchange

Well, in my quest to slowly get out of aviation, I've discovered that I have to stay in it for at least a little while longer so that I can sell some of this "junque" that I've collected over the years. And some of that "junque" is obviously worth more if it is restored so that it can be used on current restorations or flying aircraft.

That brings me to my latest project. I have a pair of horizontal stabilizer tips for a P-38 Lightning that need to find a new home. These tips were off of Scatterbrain Kid II, but I cannot confirm if they were removed prior to it's crash or after. My guess is after, seeing how they're pretty rough.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm going to disappoint a few folks by not posting pictures today, but I'm a bit on the grumpy side, and don't feel like screwing with the hassle of doing the Photobucket thing and posting the photos here tonight. However, if there is any interest in this project from y'all, I'll be sure to post the pictures later.

I stripped the hideous brown and blue paint from the tips over the last few weeks, just taking my time with it. And this evening, I decided to "get my mind off things" and do something fun...like drilling rivets out. A bunch of description here isn't much good without the pictures, so I'll spare you the boredom. However, what I found interesting about this is that once I got the upper skin drilled off (took about 45 minutes or so), I was amazed at all of the writing and factory stamps inside the thing. It got the ol' rubber stamp from the inspectors, on several different spots inside. And there are lots of hand written numbers and whatnot as well. One rib even has written on it, "Dimpled by 73562," followed by that inspector's initials.

Another interesting thing was that the inside of the skins seem to have black paint or primer applied to them. It's obviously been faded over the years of sitting outside, but I wonder why the factory chose black for this?

One last observation is that there are a few ribs and such that are not primed at all. They appear to be factory installations, but why they are natural metal, while the rest of the structure is primed, is a mystery to me.

Anyway, I'll get over this mood I'm in and get some pictures posted later, but I thought what I found after working on this stuff for a little while was kind of neat, so that's why I decided to share it with y'all now.

Stay tuned for more,
Gary

cant wait to see what your up to when you get around to it. I kind of did the same thing when I did my repairs on the aileron and rudder for the N3N. Maybe some day I will get around to it.

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Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

Keep us posted on the project; when you feel like it. Makes a good education for the rest of us

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"They can teach MONKEYS to fly better than that"

http://www.heritageflight.org
http://www.bravo369.org

It seems hit or miss what was painted zinc and what wasn't.
Years ago when restoring the P-38s I came across several NOS parts for the P-38. Multiple parts which were the same all were different in terms of finish. An assem made up of several parts would have a combination of dark and light zinc, silver paint and bare alum. Out of several of these assemblies none were the same.
Rich

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Rich Palmer

Remember an Injured Youth
benstear.org
#64- Stay Strong and Keep the Faith

BOOM BOOM, ROUND ROUND, PROPELLER GO

Don't Be A Dilbert!

Slowly get out of aviation!!?!! Yeah like I will, when they pack me out on an old aileron with the toes of my DOC MARTINS pointed at the ceiling and a drill bit and chuck key in my cooling hand-

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Well, I reckon I can just start over here, with a post that actually has pictures......

I didn't take any real "before" shots, as I didn't have an operational camera at the time. Just imagine two banged up tips with faded brown paint on one side and blue paint on the other. Now imagine seeing a fat boy out in the Midland sun, stripping that paint off of the tips. Not very exciting, is it?

So let's fast forward to yesterday. Here is the R/H tip, that I started on first. You can see that it was pretty well beat up. I'm not sure if the gashes on top were from the Scatterbrain Kid II wreck, or from knuckleheads not giving a dang when they mowed around the parts that were thrown on the ground for all those years......Hmmm....but now that I think about it, they must've been there from the wreck, as the grass rarely got mowed when these tips were just laying outside. ......








The first thing I did was to remove the butt rib. The reason I chose to do this was because I wanted to get a better look inside, to see if it would make a difference which skin I took off first, due to damage, corrosion, etc. After the quick inspection, there didn't seem to be any reason to pick one side over the other, but I chose the more damaged skin first, just because I wanted the "good" side to hold the remaining structure together for now..........






Here it is after about 45 minutes of drilling rivets out.......




And voila'.
(Rich, I forgot to take any detailed pictures of the primed vs. non-primed parts, but if you look on the far side of the tip, you may be able to see a couple of the pieces I was talking about. You gave a nice explanation on that, by the way. )...........




You know, this thing actually looked much better inside than I thought it would. Sure, there's some damage, but overall, I think I'll be able to repair most of the bent stuff, rather than having to make them new (stay tuned to see if my forecast on that is accurate), and there really isn't much corrosion to speak of inside. But as mentioned in my first post, there is a bunch of writing, inspector's stamps, etc., in this thing. It's not that I don't expect to see stuff like that, but it seemed odd to me that there were sooooo many in such a relatively small piece of the airplane.

Here's the one that says, "Dimpled by........."




And here are just a few examples of some of the stamps and writing throughout.......










And here's that black paint or primer that is on the inside of the skins that I was talking about in my first post........




So, that's all I have to report for now. I'm not going to work on it for the next week or so, as I have other errands to take care of, but I'll post more when more gets done.

Gary