Restoration of the Bristol Blenheim pilot's seat under way

Suomeksi

Last year we finished the restoration of the co-pilot’s stool from a V-series (BL-106) Bristol Blenheim bomber. Our object was a short-nosed Blenheim, assembled after the war from surplus parts in the 1950’s, having dual controls for training purposes. Beside the pilot’s seat there was a stool-like seat for the copilot. The controls in front of the seat were connected with rods to the captain’s controls. Mind you, that this series V-Blenheim aircraft (BL-106), assembled after the war, has in fact nothing in common with the UK-built war horse (BL-106), which was destroyed in a crash landing on 8.6.1944.

After restoring the copilot’s stool we moved our sights on the pilot’s seat. Restoring is all about cleaning the seat frame, basically a steel tube construction, from dirt, grease and rust. For the part of the seat pan, it meant cleaning the surfaces and sanding before painting. Note that the seat had no back armour.

As the first task we detached the leather-covered padding of the seat armrest to be conserved. After that we started the cleaning of the pilot’s seat. Soon we realized that cleaning would be more efficient and easier, if we could separate the aluminium seat pan and the seat frame.

Separating the seat pan and the seat frame necessitated the removing of the steel cross tube, rather like a big split pin, joining them. The cross tube consists of two tubes, joined by a butt joint, and a sleeve around the seam. We finally managed to slide the rusted sleeve from the seam and thus separate the tubes. We stripped the seat frame of all the parts that we could and detached the numerous rusty clips and other fasteners from the frame to be cleaned.

Some of the parts of the pilot’s seat were merely dirty and grimy, so to clean them for instance Fairy Power Spray was used. It removed the grease and dirt reasonably well from the surface of the parts.

The badly rusted tubes of the seat frame were cleaned by using abrasive pads, sanding papers and a steel wire brush attached to a cordless drill. For small parts, like nuts, a steel wire brush attached to a Dremel was used. The small items we detached from the frame were cleaned with an ultrasonic cleaner, which we had obtained.

When rust from the surface of the rusty tubes was removed, in places black paint was revealed. Based on that we concluded that the seat frame of steel tube structure had last been painted black. The cleaning of the tub-like aluminium part of the seat pan, made it apparent that the aluminium surface had been primed with grey primer and finished with greyish green surface coat of paint. The surface paint responds in shade to the greyish green Temalac ML 90 BS 283-shade we had already used in restoring the co-pilot’s seat. As primer we’re going to use Isotrol-lacquer and as surface paint Isoquard Panzer paint. The black paint will be the semigloss Isoquard Panzer paint.

We’ve more or less completed the cleaning the pilot’s seat from rust and grime, so the next phase will be the painting of the seat.

Photos: Lassi Karivalo

Translation to English: Matti Liuskallio