The work has started

The following weekend after I brought the glider home, I began working on making space in the garage to create the room necessary for this project. My plan was to work on what I believed to be the most complicated part of the restoration, the fuselage. I had to create an elevated cradle. I measured the fuselage width at the widest area, forward of the leading edge pins.

I modeled the cradles from the ones Robert Mudd had at his hanger, where he used the same style to work on the repairs in work shop. 

   

As soon as the cradle was finished, I pulled out the fuselage from the trailer, and carefully rolled it into the garage. With the help of Louise, I lifted the forward portion of the fuselage, and slid it into the jig.

I still needed to build the wing dolly, which I finished the following weekend. 

With the cradle made and the garage cleaned up (for the most part), it wasn't until the first weekend in May that I was ready to start the restoration.

The first thing I tackled was removing the registration numbers, pilot name, and a thick US flag. This was an easy task since the lettering was vinyl. A heat gun and a plastic scraper made short work of that!

Before the day was over the lettering was removed, and also the tail wheel!



Now the most exciting task ahead of me, clean out that cockpit!