Instrument Panel Restoration Part I.

Hawker Typhoon / Tempest Instrument Panel, Scale 1:1

by Roman Čulen
text Marcel Meres

Standard central part of the RAF main instrument panel.

First of all I have to avow I do not know where could the instrument panel reconstruction as a hobby belong to. Maybe a mix of kit making and restoration? Instruments, controls and other instrument panel components do not remain prevailingly in such good conditions as you can see them incorporated into the finished central part of a main instrument panel  at picture above – most often you must have a lot of patiency to amend them. The greatest moment is when you are able to get them working.

In this rare particular case all the instruments were originals. They only needed to be cleaned thoroughly. The base plate was made newly because the original one was not available.

There is a plate for an instrument panel for P-47 (picture above) and underneath is a plate for RAF instrument panels. It was made of a 5mm thick duraluminum plate. Instrument openings were carved out using a water beam machine while holes for screws were drilled by a drill press at a home work-room.

If you take heart to bring together your own panel, please be aware this will be a relatively challenging and time consuming work. Everything will begin with legwork – to get the original vintage instrument panel or at least a base plate for it would be the best (you will manage it very rarely though). You will have to hunt out the particular instruments and the valuable documentation/reference material too. If you have blueprints it is the best possibility just next to having the real thing. If not, the last way is to get a pile of good photographs from which you can calculate and draw everything you need. I was told this is the hardest work – but yes – just after digging the instruments 😀 . So in the beginning you can feel partly like a documentarist and partly like a prop man.

This is a plate for the central panel oversprayed by a base colour (above) and black colour (below).

You will indulge yourself in travelling too – you need to visit many people and all the needed components to worry out, exchange or buy. You can also look around at some of the specialized meetings of collectors all around the world. When you already have everything you need for your project you are getting into the restoring phase. Especially when you have WW II. aircraft instruments. At that time you will need to repair them or to (more-or-less) make them from scratch. If this does not discourage you from continuing you will have to repair the original instrument plate – or to manufacture a new one – ino which all the instruments have to be embedded. And finally comes the proper patina. The finished instrument panel should very closely resemble a vintage original with all the stencilling and marks but scratches too. Mostly here in the finishing phase you can feel the modeller factor of the whole project.

Two views of the british gun-sight, Type I. Mk. III.

And here is the compass. It will have to wait for its console – as will the gun-sight:

In this article I tried to express my respect for this interesting hobby. Maybe I was not absolutely accurate in every way because I have got only second-hand information by hearsay from my long-time and very good friend Roman who addicts himself to this hobby for a relatively long time period. All the photographs used in this article are from him too. This project is not finished yet – it is waiting for the gun-sight and compass installation plus the whole instrument panel final assembly. But being terribly impatient I posted here at least the finished standard central panel. Sooner or later all the future building steps will be added.

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Model & Photographs Copyright © 2012 by Roman Čulen.
Text Copyright © 2012 by Marcel Meres.