57 Caravanner 4 of...

The body works continues. Panel by panel I removed the damaged ones...

… Hole by hole I copied everything. By doing this, the new panel goes right into place.

Back in late 1956 or early 1957 a guy at Jackson Center took out a red grease pencil and marked out where someone was to drill through the skin and the rib behind it. Airstreams are hand made. This is the evidence that 57 years ago, the hand of a man touched this trailer and left it's mark. I use a black sharpie instead of a grease pencil. Maybe in 50 some years a guy will be drilling out my rivets and contemplating where I left my mark.

You may be asking yourself, 'why would you go to this extent?' Because the scrap above will never go away. 

Once polished, dents like this show to the eye like a neon sign out in the desert at night.

A dented scrape like this going from one end to the other could never be made right.

Yowzer! That's a long one!!! The hatch door was removed, but it went right across the hatch and on towards the rear. End cap to end cap that is 12 feet.

Some of the damage goes very deep.

Up front there used to be a battery box. By replacing this skin, all the holes, blemishes, and battery acid stains can be removed.

All this panel replacing uses a lot of Cleckos. Even using them spread to out every other or every third hole, I saw the bottom of my Clecko box. Over the years I have purchased around 3000 black Cleckos. The barbs bend, the prongs stick, occasionally some end up in the scrap bin. Even if 25% have been lost to attrition, there still are a lot of Cleckos in my box. It is rare I see the bottom of the box.

This is also a sign I drilled a turnip truck load of holes. 

Eventually I made it back to where I started.

 Of all the lower panels, only the one at the door, under the window, was not replaced

Panel by panel we filled all the holes with solid rivets. A thick bead of Trempro 626 was applied between all the seams.

The Clecko box is over flowing once again. The damage is just a memory now.