B-25 repaired

I finally repaired the B-25 for my flying buddy.The controls were quite a mess. The builder twisted the solid music wire leadouts and soldered them. The twists were done tight and nicely done. There was no need to solder them. The solder wasn't cleaned properly and bad oxidation took place which was binding the controls on the bellcrank. The same was done on the outside terminations and the rust on the leadouts were binding in the brass exit tubes badly. This took a lot of sanding and working the controls in and out for a hour. This plane had many tears in the silkspan. One thing I noted with these tears was that some of the were victim of being handled. I removed the silkspan and sheeted the top wing between fuse and engine nacelle so that no forefingers and thumbs were going to tear it again.

          I don't know what the original was painted with. I noted that dope didn't attack the finish so I opted for dope. I mixed the olive drab and blue and was WAAAAY off on both colors. There was nothing I did that enabled me to match the color no matter what colors I mixed. Dope isn't water colors and the colors don't react as one would think. I settled on what I did and I'm certain my friend will have no problems with my repair. You won't see at 60 mph.



      engines were taken apart and gone through. I test ran both and bolted them back on. I was somewhat surprised to see that one was a car engine with the big shaft and prop adapter Paint not a perfect match but it is what it is. It looks good to me