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Restoration remains......opinions?

Posted by Dan Jones on Fri Apr 30, 2004 03:02:16 AM

In reply top Restoration remains......opinions? posted by Stephen C on Thu Apr 29, 2004 06:56:48 AM

Who wants to do the marketing? (I'll supply the "junk"). :-)

We'll call the business "Warbird Paper-Weights"!


Seriously though, it's a great question. I've thrown away stuff that was literally just scrap (old rotten wood, crushed steel tubing, etc) but anyone or any organization that just scraps whatever is left over once their project is finished isn't really into preservation. I've seen complete radial engines (!) tossed into a certain museum's scrap bin here in Alberta after they got their Anson project finished. They gathered up stuff from farmers for years for their project and then once they were done EVERYTHING that was left over went out the back door and into the scrap bin. That was just criminal.

(alot of it had "disappeared" again by morning however...)

Alot of stuff gets recyled too. You have to keep in mind that as passionate as we all can get about these airplanes, they are just man-made machines, and fairly recently man-made machines at that, and when you re-skin a baggage door for a Stearman, for example, the piece of skin that you took off is just an old sheet of anodized alclad, all shot full of holes and dings and dents - if it were still any good you probably wouldn't have replaced it in the first place, right? But it gets recycled into little doublers and brackets, or sometimes into a tool too.

Hopefully with the better communications that we have nowadays and with sights such as Barnstormers, ebay, or even this one, more "leftovers" can find their way to more suitable homes. Maybe we could even add a "Leftovers Clearinghouse" to this site Scott? Nothing fancy, just say by a/c type and with an email address? Something like:

Bristol Balderdash leftovers - John Biggles - siskin@raf.uk ?

Just a thought...

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