Caravelle - Dry-Ice in the Air

At the end of the restoration team’s autumn session we managed to clean the lower surfaces of the wings using dry-ice blasting method. This method was selected for cleaning the worst (i.e. dirtiest) areas fast, and in a safe and clean way. The achieved time saving was also considerable, shortening the overall project time. This means that when spring arrives, our volunteers can continue grinding and polishing the fuselage and wings, and we can also start installing the engine nacelles.

The dry-ice blasting was done professionally by Dry Ice Finland in a few days. The methodology in brief:

Dry-ice (carbon dioxide) is pure carbon dioxide in solid form, the temperature is about -79 °C. In dry-ice blasting the dry-ice pellets are blown with high pressure to the surface to be cleaned. Once the pellets hit the surface, they evaporate (sublimate) into the air and the dirt removed will fall down for easy cleaning as needed. Dry-ice blasting is a totally dry, chemical-free and almost wasteless method.

The photos of the aircraft’s wing surface before and after cleaning show the results of dry-ice blasting.

While the dry-ice cleaning was going on, the Pansio volunteers managed to grind from one side of the fuselage under the windows an 18 cm wide belt of white paint, which originates from the SAS paint scheme. The aim is to follow Finnair’s OH-LEA paint instructions, and we shall polish the lower part of the fuselage, up to the lower edge of the windows. The other side will have to wait until the weather warms up – it is a good starting point when our work continues next spring.