Serious tooling for serious work
The sun was out and it was another beautiful day so task one was to take the Maule out for a jaunt over the green hills
The beauty of flight - and of Spring
This is less that 5 miles from the airport where we keep the Maule
Okay, last week we left off with a smoking buffer. I cleaned it up and put it back together but it just wasn't up to the task
So I stopped in at OSH on the way back from the airport and just about emptied the Vintage Air accounts to purchase this
Mo Bigga, Mo Bedda
Now we're getting somewhere - minus the smoke and ozone fumes
Part of getting a decent shine is preparation. If you start with a uniform surface you get better results
The first thing you discover is that anything with a corner, edge or radius is the easiest to polish
It's the large flat areas that give you the most trouble - I'm not looking forward to doing the wings
Fortunately most of the fuselage has a radius to it and very few flats so it polishes up fairly easily
One of the properties of aluminum that allows us to get such a brilliant shine also makes it suseptable to scratches
These Marianis Trench sized gouges were caused by the air hose hanging alongside the fuselage as I rotated it
At this stage of the game swirl marks are good - it means that work is being done
I'm beginning to think that when this is polished it's gonna look like some sort of sophistocated ECM device
Not too shabby for the initial compound shine. The right tools definitely make a difference
When the accounts are again brimming with cash (after my tax refund arrives) I'm gonna spring for the Cyclo buffer
A skin condition known as Nuvitia - similar to Rosatia but more noticable
- Fortunately it washes off -