WIX Archives
Original Materials or Original Configuration?
Posted by Dan Jones on Mon Jun 17, 2002 01:55:18 AM
In reply top Re: 'Real' or 'Genuine' posted by David M Jameson on Sun Jun 16, 2002 06:07:54 PM
Originality is a two bladed sword, and how that applies to a flying aircraft could even add a third edge to it.
Originality, as it applies to a "warbird", comes in a couple of different forms. First of all there is the originality of materials, ie "Are these nuts and bolts on this fitting the very same nuts and bolts that were on this fitting sixty years ago?"
Then there is the originality of the condition of those materials? ie "Are these old, original nuts and bolts (now rusted into a solid mass that even a nut splitter can barely seperate) more representative of "how it was" because they are in fact the same ones, or are you better off using new production nuts and bolts of exactly the same type that are more original than the originals are now do to the original nuts and bolts having suffered from the ravages of time and no longer being even remotely representative of what they were?
I like originality and in our shop we shoot for originality, but in rebuilding old, beaten-up airplanes that were long ago given up for scrap, you have to make certain concessions to material originality and instead go with conditional originality (ie using new bolts of the same type instead of the actual old ones) which I think is where a big part of this debate partly lies. And if you are building airplanes to fly, than originality takes an immediate backseat to safety, and sometimes that even means both types of originality are thrown out the door and instead you use the best and safest (and usually this means the most expensive) solutions to solve the problem. ie Who, in their right mind, would use a Carbon-Tetrachloride fire extinguisher nowadays?
Again, I don't mean to offend anyone or talk down my nose to anyone because I'm not. Any enthusiast on this board is cordially invited to our hangar to have a peek and a coffee and maybe help us solve a problem.
Should you misleed people about the lineage of your airplane, whatever it is, no, of course not, but neither should other people be looking down their nose at your Mustang just because it wasn't born in Inglewood or Dallas.
Dan Jones
warbirds@shaw.ca