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The restoration of VH-BFR started mid-April at Alpine Aviation at Wangaratta. Paul Mitchell, Stuart and Ron (Grumpy) Lee begin the work.
The right wing has proved to be a bit of a worry. The spar caps don’t seem to have been properly glued to the spars, wood has not been glued to wood.
I spent the past two weeks at Wangaratta continuing the strip. Only a couple of surprises, we have found an early build flap fitted to the right wing and a later build flap on the left. The old style flap has a steel tube spar and the newer build has a ‘D’ spar.
We also found a drooping aileron fitted to the right and a normal aileron on the left.The left wing doesn’t come out free from error though, we found the drooping mechanism fitted to the rear spar!!
I am home now and all that said, there was not much wrong with the VH-BFR. So, with the cleaning and inspections underway I will be back in Wangaratta soon to start the reassembly.
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VH_BFR Restoration Update July 2021
VH-BFR has been stripped and cleaned. The frame is ready for sandblasting and repainting when weather permits, priming and painting has been started on the light framework (wooden stringers are being replaced with aluminium).
Radio mounts have been manufacturered ready for weld fitment and the RCA radio system has been dropped into the crystal crackers to work their magic, lets hope we can get them working again.Mid January 2022.
Australian border restiction and closures have proved a challenge. Hopefully I will be back in Wangaratta in mid-February to start putting VH-BFR back together again.
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Looks great Geoff! Very exciting! Keep the pics coming. I looks like the top plywood ( trailing edge upper section) did not have full glue coverage. The spar looks good in the photo from what I can see.
I am amazed at how many of our planes have a mix of early and late items onboard. My observer does too. Early/late flaps, early/mid non droop wings, Late gear legs and early steel tube seats ?? Even the owners — Old pilot / young wife (pilot too) Hah:)
Sam T
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Latest Update
The new stringers and upper & lower fuselage frames have been primed & painted.
The new instrument panels have been cut ready for prime & paint.
The new radio mounts and radio power supply mounts have been manufactured and welded in place. New instrument panel uprights have also been manufacturerd and welded in.
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15 Feb 22
Great to hear from you Sam and thanks for your feedback on the wing. We will be getting into that in a couple of months. I am back in Wangaratta for a couple of weeks to get the “putting back together” part of the project started under the very keen eyes of Ron & Stuart Lee and Paul Mitchell at Alpine Air.
We collected the fuselage from the sandblaster/paint shop yesterday and loaded it into the rotisserie today. Ron’s fuse goes into the rotisserie as soon as mine is out.
I do have one question regarding RAF markings: does anyone have the dimensions and colour codes for the RAF SEAC roundels? We are a long way from painting them but want to get the paint ordered and delivered. We suspect the outer diameter equals the diameter of the circle of the star in the star & bars (they simply painted over the previous markings), it is the inner circle diameter we don’t know, nor what colour light blue it should be.
Till next time.
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G’day Gents, hope you are all safe & well and avoiding the dreaded COVID.
I sent the following messga eto a couple of you and copped a bounce back say my email was blocked due to spam content….whatever that means.
I request your advice please. My airframe (under resto) has returned from the paint shop but I am not sure the colour is correct, it is green but looks too light/bright. I get it that most of the frame will be hidden and so not important to some but as I am paying a shed load of money for the paint I would like to see it done correctly.
Do any of you have a colour code/name/recipe for the tube steel frame please?
Hilly
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Hilly,
There is no paint code per se, but off the top of my head the Stinson Finish (SF) for the tubing specified one coat of zinc chromate top coated with 1 coat of yellow-green primer. If I remember correctly, the yellow-green finish consisted of 1 part black enamel to 10 parts zinc chromate and 10 parts thinner. The problem, of course, is that zinc chromate varied quite a bit in color. The yellow-green finish is a bit of a misnomer because it’s far more green than yellow and, as you suspect, a bit darker in tone. I don’t know if it is sold in Oz, but the Tempo brand Aviation Green Zinc Phosphate primer is pretty close.
As a caveat, I’ll have to double-check the manuals to be sure I’ve got it right but you’ll find the finish specs in the AN 01-50DB-2 Erection & Maintenance Instructions if you have a copy of that. In later post-war versions, the manual was called the Handbook of Maintenance Instructions but the specs were unchanged (I think). I’ll try to shoot some photos later today of un-adulterated wartime parts against a white background for color correction, along with some parts with a straight zinc chromate finish only. That ought to give you a pretty good reference to compare with how your frame has been painted.
One other thought – many interior parts varied in shade of “interior green” and changed over time. I’ll send pics of some variations we’ve found that range from nearly yellow to olive to a leaf green. In other words, for a more authentic look you should mix it up a bit instead of a uniform color with everything matching the frame color. That’s not correct because many parts were made and finished by sub-contractors whose paint was a little different from the others – a virtual rainbow of greens.
JG
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That “interior green” is close if not dead-on Matt, but Stinson didn’t use the 1943 standard colors. Their finish was in accordance with the 1941 bulletin colors and they stuck with it throughout the war. The fading properties changed sometime in late 1944 indicating a chemical difference but the 1941 color spec was still used right through the end of 1945. I have numerous late war flaps still in original cotton cover that corroborate this. For what it’s worth, I also once had an unmolested frame OH’d by MCAS Cherry Point and the green they used was darker and shinier which shows that various facilities used what they had on hand regardless of the Army-Navy paint chip bulletins or the finish specs in the manuals.
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A quick bit to help on doing photos for color matching….Specify the color temp of the lighting that you are using. That helps correct the color from what is seen on a monitor or photo.
Daylight is above 5000K
Cool white is 3100 to 4000K
Warm white is under 3000K
The cooler the color temp, the more yellowish the light is and that will change the color appearance.
BTW, I did find a copy of the DuPont specification book, listing the various DuPont color numbers for zinc chromate for prior to August 1943. Just need to figure out how to translate them to usable info.
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