Anybody who has ever decided to polish an airplane probably knows that feeling when you wonder why you ever decided to start. Well we are past the point of no return with our little Cessna 120 and it is looking better and better every day. There has been countless hours (we actually stopped counting) put into a project that at first was just going to fix a few little things on the airplane. Now most of the airplane has been disassembled and piece by piece it is turning into a great looking polished aluminum vintage airplane.
The Fuselage is mostly done, and lately much of the work has focused on the tail, doors and cowling. The challenge on the tail surfaces are the ridges that mean you can’t just make nice sweeping passes over an area. Instead care has to be taken to work around each fold in the aluminum, but the end result is great.
The doors are looking good as well, as is the cowling. There was a fair amount of work needed on the cowling to get it back into good shape, so now we are busy sanding the roughed up metal down to a polish as can be seen in the picture below.
With summer on its way, and a few other projects always rotating through the front burner, we’re not sure when the 120 will be back in the air. But we’re very excited to get it flying again and get a chance to show off its new polished look.
