BluebirdBillSmall update uploaded today on the Barra’ Project diary – enjoy.
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Is this your tail? …Is it a tail?
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This I presume is the spares pile.
Ahh – excellent shots.
The top one shows a pair of fuselage sections in the foreground. On the far right is a slightly crumply but otherwise complete one and centre is another in two halves that some ****** has cut along its length to get at the goodies inside. I think that’s the one from the Whernside wreck. The good thing about that one is that the material is absolutely pristine though there’s a chunk of skin missing. We used bits of its fin to make new gubbins for the inside of our tailplane and it was a joy to work with. I think the complete one is from DP872 but I wouldn’t swear to it – every time I ask I get a different answer, seriously…
In the background is the fin and tailwheelery stuff from LS931 – that’s the one we’ve mended – and you can see the centre piece of our tailplane still fixed on top of it.
The spares pile is just the most glorious treasure. Everything in it can be torn down and used to mend something else or fixed in its own right if it’s something we need. Back in the early days of the Bluebird Project we were told by ‘experts’ that it was heresy to straighten bent metal because each piece was a snapshot in time, which it is, admittedly, but it’s not much good in that condition because most of the time you can’t see what it used to be, so we have absolutely no qualms about reworking it into something easier to interpret.
And, yes, the satisfaction for all of us in turning ruined scrap into recognisable pieces of aeroplane is immense. The fuselage is shaping up to be an interesting challenge.
Thanks for the pic’s, and thanks also to everyone for the kind words and encouragement.
PS – the swear filter got me. The chosen word begins with B and ends with R – nothing worse.
BluebirdBillJust as a slight aside, and for the record, our tail isn’t a mish-mash of other Barra’s, that’s the tail from LS931 – the one that crashed on Jura. It has bits and pieces of other tails in it here and there but all the major elements are from the Jura tail. We’ve a couple of boxes of unused bits to send back to the FAAM and I made a splendid pair of bookshelf brackets out of some spare spar ends (don’t tell them) and that’ll be the end of the tail adventure.
Nice pic of the (lack of) wing, by the way. There’s a big chunk at Brora that will get us well on the way, though. Don’t suppose you have one of the crunched tail?
BluebirdBillAt the end of the day it’s not our call with the Barra’ but if it’s incomplete there’s always the impetus to keep looking for bits. As Mike keeps saying – there is a complete Barra’ in the world it’s just a case of sweeping it all up and sticking it back together.
Bluebird is a different animal in that she’s being built to run and there’s no spares in the world so even if this wasn’t the case we’d still have a lot of new build just to make her look right.
Time will tell with the Barra’, I guess, but either way there’s still a hell of a lot of original to be mended and put back.
BluebirdBillFantastic project. look forward to each update to see how far it is progressing. Fantastic job all round.
Out of the wreckage that you’ve accumulated, are there substantial wings or are you not joking about not knowing what you’ll be doing for wings?
There’s most of a port wing though it’s missing a lot of the folding trailing edge. There’s half an aileron and one of those dive flaps but there’s very little starboard wing. We’ve permits in place to see what’s useable from the Brora wreck and there’s negotiations going on regarding the Norway one too but we don’t want to go snaffling things for the sake of it. We only want to take what we need so we first need to properly understand what we need. I’ve long been of the opinion that we should build all we can with genuine Barra’ and if we don’t have something we leave a hole in our aeroplane where it should go even if this means making up a framework to hold the parts of the wings we do have in a rather skeletal arrangement. They have an Albacore down there but it’s as much fakery as it is genuine aeroplane and if you’re going to do that you may as well make it from old toilet roll middles and PVA glue – in my humble opinion, that is.
BluebirdBillFantastic results in creating a complete tail section from practically nothing, well done all, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you do to the fuselage sections.
And if there’s a prize for the best looking aircraft restoration team then it surely goes to the riveting babes 😉Rob
They’re gorgeous with the notable exception of Aerospace Rob… 😉
BluebirdBillSeriously impressive stuff! What a great team too!
Thanks guys – always appreciated. And you’re right, they are an amazing team. Now that the tail is almost done the whole rear fuselage is coming up to us. It’s another 18ft long piece though at the moment it’s smashed to bits and strapped on pallets down at Yeovilton.
Looking forward to getting stuck into that piece.
We also sourced some vital steelwork recently. The cockpit section they have at FAAM wouldn’t quite attach to the centre piece of DP872 because some steel tubes are cut off one and smashed off the other but now we have an original set, which means once we’ve done this fuselage bit we can attach everything together from the tail all the way up to the nose. What we’ll do for wings is another matter.
BluebirdBillAfter all the FAAM have set a sort of precedent – repainting the Martlet fuselage whilst retaining the original paintwork on the wing.
My understanding there is that the intention was to dig out all of the original paint as they did with the Corsair but it turned out that the fuselage had been stripped sometime previously and the original was lost so they kept what they had and made the middle look as it should.
BluebirdBillNever mind the RAFM’s list of projects, the FAAM have another unique surviving pile of broken bits that I’m sure the Bluebird team could work wonders with. Surprised that nobody has mentioned the Skua on here yet (or perhaps they have and I missed it). Amazing work – I think this now sets the standard as to how rare aircraft should be restored for static display.
Ah, the Skua… The one the FAAM have is mostly not there, it was burned and it’s in a bit of a heap but we have been asked to comment on the possibility of mounting what’s there on a stainless frame so that all the bits are in the correct relative positions and that would be straightforward enough but there’s a big museum in Norway that has a heap of Skua parts not unlike the heap of Barra’ parts at Yeovilton and I have a feeling that we will be getting involved there sooner or later. Questions have been asked about that one… Last I heard was that they wanted a complete wing spar making out of a pile of broken ones. It all sounds very big and long and unlikely to fit in our van very easily.
BluebirdBillBill im assuming a `planishing hammer` is a euphemism ? 😉 great work and big fan of the diary mate keep it up.
The planishing hammer is really for putting a nice shine on the finished job. The hammer is polished like a mirror so hit the job enough times and it too begins to shine but I also use mine for shrinking. Imagine a lumpy-bumpy, out of shape piece of tinware brought back to perfect smoothness with elegant curves and think of how much money I could make if the same technique could be applied to the female form… There’s be a queue around the block and I’d be a big favourite at Weight Watchers. Alas, it doesn’t work like that…
Glad you enjoy the diary, though. It’s a direct reflection of the crazy times we have in our workshop so I’m delighted some of it is getting out and being enjoyed by others. Thanks everyone for the kind and positive comments. Always appreciated.
BluebirdBillHey! Less of the ‘old’… Heidi is younger than me and you could all keep your aeroplanes if she wanted a tickle with the planishing hammer!
So very chuffed that everyone is enjoying the Barra’ work too. We have a few metal-whisperers up here, I must do a better job of introducing them in the next diary and we do this for fun so, as I say, if any of these other projects want a hand with anything and we know how to do it we’re always glad to try and help. The first of the upper skins should be going on our tailplane this week too, Lou and Gillian get that job. They’re hilarious when thet work together – even with a sheet of ally separating them it seems that women don’t cease nattering incessantly. We should have big visual progress this month.
And, by the way, I didn’t say I definitely couldn’t weld HobNobs, it’s just that I assume it would be difficult if one had been seventy years in seawater.
BluebirdBillNot sure how much we could do for them having never seen their aeroplane up close but, certainly, if there was anything they’d seen us do that could be useful we’d be glad to help out. The problem with seawater-soaked aluminium, or any alloy for that matter (and as the Germans invented what we commonly call ‘Duralumin’ their plane is going to have lots of copper in it) is that it often eats away some of the metal content whilst leaving other constituents behind. It would be like having your cup of tea dissolve all the flour out of your Hob Nob whilst leaving the oats behind – you’d have a hell of a job getting it out of the cup and you’d certainly never be able to weld it. I daresay we could get their undercarriage apart, though.
BluebirdBillJust out of interest – I got to the bottom of the clampy thing and why half of it unclamps and swings out of the way. It seem the upper half is more or less permanent with phosphor-bronze bearing shells such as you’d find around the centre main on a crankshaft with thrust faces top and bottom. They allow the leg part to turn freely inside the clamp but not to slip up and down. The lower half of the clamp, the part that opens like a clamshell, is a friction damper with three slices of woven friction material in there and a spring a adjuster on the front to set the clamping pressure. This, I presume, is so that the leg can be adjusted to whiz around as required when hurled at a rolling deck but without being all slack and doing as it pleases.
Glad you’re all still enjoying the updates, we’re certainly enjoying building an aeroplane. The tailplane only needs the rest of its skins put back and one leading edge and all that tailwheel stuff is going to be enough to keep a couple of us busy at best so the boys at the FAAM have de-riveted the aft fuselage from DP872 and we’re looking at getting a slice or two of that up here next.
BluebirdBillNot much of a diary this month. Stripping down that frame 26 where the tailwheel goes is a long, struggly process without much to see. We’ve mended a few bits of Hurricane this month too – I’ve not quite worked out what that’s all about but basically a bent and snapped piece of ally tube arrives in the post and leaves all nice and straight and joined back together again. How many bits of tube go into a Hurricane? More Barra’ skins going on soon , though, because mike spent most of Saturday making a great job of the last of the ribby-stringery things.
BluebirdBillHave investigated and am mildly puzzled because I have a couple of what I took to be elevator hinge bolts that are definitely UNF but everything else I’ve checked is BSF as Bruce correctly pointed out. I’ve therefore concluded that the elevator hinge bolts are nothing of the sort and our heap of wreckage has been contaminated so from now on we’re on BSF.
So thanks for that and please, if anyone sees us going wrong, shout about it until we put it right.
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