PBY Restoration

I wish that some of these posts were more entertaining or humorous but they do their job.  Chip tirelessly working on our work steps so that we can get in and out of the plane without destroying the air stair.  I think they started their lives as scaffolding stairs and with a few welds a few pieces of steel and some paint, they can now experience the glorious life of PBY stairs.  Anyway,  we got a Smithy machine last week and Gary made a nice step for us because most of us are short.  Dean recommended that we go to a second-hand store and find some of those old disco platform shoes that had four or five inch platforms, after some discussion we decided that the stairs would suffice.  Chip made a wood cover for the ways on the machine so that we can change the lathe chuck without damage to fingers or the machine.  He also cleaned up a bunch of parts in the media blasting cabinet as well as using a scraper and other tools to clean up parts.  I enthusiastically recommended some of the other parts that needed chemical paint stripping but no one ever seems to share my excitement.  I kept busy drilling rivets out. Who would have guessed.  Last week I found some more major corrosion and I am not going to go into it.  Just need to take it one step at a time.  Right now I am still in the discussion phase with the expert.  We know more or less how it is going to be done but I have found that sometimes its best to see what else could possibly be thrown at us.  I would go into it more but I am tired and I am going to the Seattle area tomorrow to work on a different aircraft.  I suppose I could use the break from the cat and the expert assures me that the part I was drilling out will be there when I get back.  Although Dean speaks of leprechauns or other short folk from the twilight zone that may do that type of work.  I don't know, I give it fifty fifty.  You never know with Dean.  I have some great pictures of the ford tractor he is restoring also, so next chance I get I will get those up.  And I found my camera after a week of looking.  Maybe thats what the leprechauns do, I don't remember I will definitely get clarification from Dean.