Ozjag,
Thank you for the comments, all helps to resolve how things can work and not work.
In terms of buyers wanting stuff immediately they can always do things anyway they chose. I figure in my experience things always come piecemeal – stuff sits on the shelf until other stuff that makes it viable to progress an aspect of a project becomes available. In the past I have gagged to have the satisfaction of holding something in my hands but then I reflect it sits on my shelf waiting for another enabling bit that may be months or years away. The key thing is to ‘know it is available and on the way’ rather than air freighted at great cost like a perishable.

In terms of predicting when a shipment might be full, you are right, it may never be ‘full.’ But what is full ? A tea chest or a 20′ shipping container ? It doesn’t really matter. Perhaps the way to start this off is to do two shipments per year – one in June and one in December. Whatever is there, is there, when the truck arrives to pick it up. Maybe quarterly – March, June, Sept, Dec. For me, having a depot in the UK where I can send stuff that I might buy is quite useful, as it might be for somebody in the UK buying out of Australia. I find that I can get 2014 aluminium in the UK but only 2024 in Australia, while somebody restoring a US design in the UK might have trouble getting US type material in the UK. I would find it useful to combine small quantities of materials and bits at a depot knowing that I have them and that they will be safely dispatched. I might want to buy part of somebody’s library or bid on an auction on the other side of the world with some option for getting things handled locally.

Freight forwarders do everything from mangos to mining equipment. Their standard, initial response is to say ‘no problem, leave it to me’. If it’s a 23 year old they then put down the phone and call out across the room , ” I’ve got this cranky old goat who wants to move a rusty undercarriage, is that a steam train or elastic support underwear or something ?” Then they flip through charts of custom codes and try to figure out how to combine a rusty undercarraige and mangos in one shipment leaving next week. If it’s too hard for them then the whole thing becomes hard for everybody.

In respect of import duties small parcels today tend to get lost in the cavalcade of online ordered lipstick and Nike shoes, but the government will eventually catch up. Most folk just undervalue things. It’s like the old joke about the dying man fearing what his wife will do with his collection : “I hope she doesn’t sell it for what I told her I bought it for!”. In truth, to a dispassionate observer, most of this stuff is scrap metal, and can be defensibly described as such. Excise on old aeroplane bits will never fix any governments budget deficit. The real danger is that officialdom catogorizes scrap metal as a modern, functional aerospace component, in a circumstance where tariffs on aerospace might be more about protecting domestic manufacture of aerospace parts. So the garage restorer is presented with a horrific excise bill for scrap metal. Mostly the government is concerned with quarantine, on greasy, soily things and an easy way to modestly tithe what comes in, by relying on well prepared documentation and declarations. I might think that a piece of the Red Barons wing fabric with Maltese cross is priceless, the government would be happier to see it declared as ‘fabric sample’, because it fits a tariff code, and it’s true.

I don’t expect to be overrun with this concept. We are all to independent and feisty and secretive to make this hum. It does no harm to set something up and let folks know that an option exists for 2-4 bulk shipment ‘shuttles’ per year and a UK – Australia (and maybe other) depot arrangement to support getting more stuff happening.

Official Apology

Need to get the number of teeth right and consistent between posts! I demand a recount!

Smirky remind me never to divide a chocolate cake up in front of you ! In the interests of aviation safety and accuracy I acknowledge my counting was as accurate as a statement by the Federal Reserve of the United States estimating total government debt, sort of approximate…

You are correct, so I put back the beer I gulped!:very_drunk:

For example different items attract import duties at different rates, while some may be exempt. A similar situation exists between airworthy items and non-airworthy items; IIRC even between helicopter and general aviation parts.

Likewise some items attract VAT, while others don’t. These issues can be difficult to sort out even within a shipment from one consignee, let alone from different consignees.

Similarly who would allocate / decide who picked up the VAT portion of the cost?

From a customs perspective the consignee is responsible for identifying and applying the Commodity Coding to the goods and this could be difficult with ‘mixed-items’, e.g. if one item was mistakenly identified could the whole shipment be impounded? If so who would be responsible for sorting out the issues?

Twin Otter, thank you for your comments and for identifying one of the great frustrations in the process. To clarify my thoughts :

The principal benefit of the dropshop is to be a depot with a local, caring representative. For example a seller wishes to clear out a garage quickly, but does not have the time or temperament to deal with anyone but a local buyer. I buy a Lancaster mainwheel out of the garage over the phone and get a courier to pick it up and deliver it to Whitleys Dropshop. The seller is happy quickly clearing the garage. I am happy because I have the missing mainwheel for my project and no one is snapping at my heels to get it out of the garage while I fumble through a Minestrone soup of international freight regulations and problems, forcing me to deal with expensive freight forwarders who ONLY want to get it on as airfreight, because airfreight margins are better for them.

Whitley lets me know the Mainwheel has arrived. I am familiar with Australian Customs and Excise as the Australian dropshop. I tell Whitley, hypothetically, that the mainwheel is suitable for classification under 34-X-989-456 Tractor Wheels and Implements. If I am wrong, I have to fix it when Customs in Australia are unhappy, but I can troop down to the local customs office and sort it out. Whitley affixes my Australian address to the wheel and Customs declaration. Whitley secures a large wooden crate, and puts the mainwheel at the bottom, then surrounds it with other items individually addressed and declared that need to go to Australia, making sure to put somebody’s bubble canopy above the wheel. Once the crate is full, he contacts a number of freight forwarders and gets the best quote for surface shipping to Australia for ONE, itemised crate, for sending to the P&P Australian Dropshop. The more we do this, the more familiar we become with quarantine, customs, excise regulations between two anglophone nations with caring representatives at each end who are able to sort out issues if they arise.

In Australia, the freight forwarder notifies P&P that Customs have put a hold on the container, because a Quarantine sniffer dog has smelt soil in the timber crate. I rush down to the Customs office with the paperwork that Whitley has given me that shows that the mainwheel was steam cleaned using a Customs approved contractor in the UK and the timber crate was appropriately fumigated and we start to work through the issue. The crate is opened and the individual packages inspected. the dog goes crazy on one package, declared as scrap metal. It is opened and a dug up Browning falls out. I am cuffed and led away to the Police. Once I am released on bond, I ask Whitley what happened. He says the package came from someone he hadn’t dealt with before and they assured him that it was OK, just some old Hurricane tubes. We decide on a new policy : all packages sent to the dropshop are opened and checked, fumigated if necessary and returned to sender if ‘not right’. Really we need to deal with folk we know who recognise the benefit of mutuality. We also need to work cooperatively with Customs who are doing their job and whose help we need to navigate through lawful import of radium gauges and deactivated weapons, if that’s what folk want, down the track.

This kind of service is already done for niche things like paintings, for example. All we are doing is getting a niche channel going for aeroplane parts & materials, with nice caring people who know the difference between a FW190 and ME109, a Bristol Hercules and a Lockheed Hercules.

AS Lynx?

No beer!

Thank you for your comments, I appreciate it. Hoisting a beer, even more !

Aerospace structures are so complex, with so many bits, that no single person can ever hope to grasp all of it. The State, through its budget, and under the spur of war, originally coordinated perhaps thousands of people into the act of channelling products of science and enterprise into a single flying mechanism. It is impossible for a single individual today, however wealthy, to compete with the resources of the State, so getting an aerospace structure restored in a garage in your spare time is a tough journey. So cooperation is key, I think, to future progress, almost the mimic of the original shadow factory – subcontractor formula that the State adopted to minimise it’s costs. So you may as well let folks know that patterns exist for castings that are cheaper by the dozen.

While the flying mechanisms remain, the folk that the State paid to train to tend to them do not, so ‘the knowledge’ is also lost. I think it is so important to share this knowledge and to make it available to future custodians, mostly unborn. It’s also fun to tool around with molten magnesium, with a beer in hand !

Today we have 3D printing, CAD drafting and other productivity improvements that promise things like short run, lower cost production of antique parts. I am a fully signed up member of this movement, but when it comes to casting parts, nothing will beat the traditional pattern maker and foundry man. Can you 3D print a magnesium casting ? In a good university, perhaps. But the great advantage of 3D printing is avoiding machining out a small part from a larger piece of metal : casting, an ancient technique, already does this. No brass bell in a cathedral was ever machined out of billet. Casting is an intrinsically efficient process, where a complex pattern is amortized against thousands of repeats with economic use of metal. When I look at modern cast engine or gearbox housings today the ancient process is alive as it ever was.

But it is harder and harder to find a pattern maker. So, can we then dispense with the pattern maker and 3D print a pattern that would traditionally be made by hand out of wood ? Perhaps we can. But first we need a twenty something with accurate measuring skills to translate paper plans or an object into a computer object. Then the object needs to be sliced up in a way that makes sense to the foundry man, who must create an air cavity in a sandbox of the final shape, based on the pattern. In other words the pattern may have to be in two or three pieces to allow a sandbox cavity to be created. Of course the foundry man and the pattern maker will allow for the shrinkage of the metal as it cools, making their patterns larger as appropriate. Then they will understand that it is fundamental that metal flows, rather than solidifies in the wrong way in the cavity, causing porosity in the final product. They will place ‘chills’ within the sandbox to ‘freeze’ some sections of the melt before others, based on experience and intuition. So the 3D pattern needs to accomodate all these things, and be designed with this in mind. In truth we need to place the pattern maker, mollified with beer in hand, with the twenty year old CAD jockey, to coach them step by step. Then the 3D pattern will then be printed out of expensive plastic, atom by atom. The pattern maker, out of beer now and impatient, will compare the cost of this with making it out of the traditional, cheap wood. In the time taken to misuse modern productivity tools, the pattern maker, roused in indignation, will make three traditional patterns at a third of the cost. So we will stick with the pattern maker, with the smell of wood shavings and time honoured traditions with the Mosquito wheel.

Once you get to the top of the queue the patternmaker will start drawing out the process on an old bit of wood :

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The red parts show the final part that will be machined out of the rough casting. He adds additional material, with shrinkage factors, to allow for this. He then works out how it will all come apart to allow the foundry man a chance to make an effective sandbox. The purpose with the pattern is not to make a timber facsimilie of the final product, but one made out of air surrounded by sand, where the air will eventually be displaced by molten metal. It takes a while for me to get my head around all this, and the deeper I go the more I admire the knowledge of the pattern maker and foundry man. We discuss how it would have been done in production 70 odd years ago. We cannot do the same because we are not producing thousands of units, perhaps a handful. Modern casting also incorporates improved techniques that can be taken advantage of. In truth the wheel has been sitting on the shelf at the pattern maker for some time, whispering away as he passes, and I know that’s how this trade works, percolating at its own pace, letting thoughts roll around until they are ready. When they are they burst into quick execution. The pattern maker knocks out a basic timber form in the time it would take for a CAD jockey to flick through their emails before they start the work they are there to do.
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