If you're familiar with some of my previous questions, you'll know I have a thing for DC-3's, and I'd like to buy one and fix it up at some point in my life. I was looking at pictures on Google for my desktop background and saw several with shiny chrome/aluminum bodies. Well, first of all, is it chrome or polished aluminum? Second, would I be able to buy a DC-3 painted this God-awful forest green and put whatever it is (chrome/aluminum) on said plane? Or is it something that the plane has to be built with originally?
Polished aluminum... airplanes are not chrome plated... weight and the difficulty of electro-plating an entire aircraft are the reasons Could likely get some dissimilar metal corrsosion problems as well... Polished aluminum airplanes are absolutely beautiful, but it takes an incredible amount of work to get it that way, and a nearly equal amount of work to keep it up... plan on spending lots of time, money or both...
Polished aluminum, get a couple heavy duty buffers and some for your friends and then buy stock in Flitz. You can also get it where you want it and paint it with clearcote to keep it a littl better, or what most do; paint it a light gray or silver color. You can strip it, but strip and paint is not cheap. Also, since the controls are fabric covered, they will never match the polished fuselage, that's why paint is better.
The shine comes from alclad aluminum. The aluminum sheeting of the aircraft actually has about .004 of pure aluminum coating . That pure aluminum is how they get the chrome like shine.
The polished aluminum that DC3's carried (actually any airplane) is the unfinished aluminum that they were built with. It takes lots and lots of work to remove old paint and then polish to get the shine you want. You can not chrome the aircraft, It has to be polished then kept polished and that isn't easy. PS - a repaint is much easier and protects the raw materials much better. However, I agree that a polished aluminum aircraft is very pretty.
