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"Heck, the way things have gone this past week, I'll be lucky to have this stinkin' door finished by the winter of 2007-2008." — Gary Austin

Rear entry door fabrication/rebuilding: Part V - Originally Posted Dec. 03, 2006

I reckon it's time for another update. As y'all could probably tell from some previous posts, I've had a poor week of productivity. It just seemed like everything I touched turned to scrap. I have finally been able to get a few things done, so here are the photos from the last few days...

Before going any further on fabrication of other items on this door project, I had to rivet the piece together that will be the plug where the bottom of the old door used to be. All of the parts for this puzzle were acid etched, alodined, and primed before shooting them together......

Now that the door has something to swing on, I have started fabricating the upper portion of it. Once that is done, I will make the outer skins and then the inside portion. It just goes to show that a project that I thought would be done a week ago sometimes takes much more effort than originaly thought.

One thing that I've been very pleased with is the amount of help I have received this week. There were actually two different Squadron members here working...and they were both pilots! Ken Hyman and Matt Olafsen came out to do some of the "unskilled labor." They weren't here for very long, but it is truly amazing how much of this short term labor saves me in the long run. The airplane is about as taken apart as I need it for the inspection, so now it's clean up time and major fabrication time. The High Sky Wing here in Midland has also been ultra helpful and came by yesterday to collect all of our cowl flaps to start cleaning and stripping the paint off of them. They have also pledged to do the same with all of the other painted parts that have been removed from the airplane.

I cannot stress how important it has been for me to have this thread going on WIX. I sort of rolled my eyes when "bomberflight" started the thread just over a month ago, but I'm glad he did. I was going to keep this project sort of on a "hush-hush" level, only giving little tid-bits of information out, but I'm glad I didn't. There is enough secrecy in the Warbird world. I hope that these updates of mine have helped those of you out there who support the Warbird movement understand what those of us who maintain them go through. Your nice comments to me have not gone unnoticed, and I very much appreciate them.

Now, with all of that being said...it's time for me to get back to work.