Anyone recognize these interior pieces?

[Hank Jarrett]

I am making new interior parts for the 45 restoration and (happily) saved all the old stuff when I took her apart. While going through the old nasty interior there were two pieces (using the same carpet pattern) that I have NO IDEA where they went. Anyone have similar pieces in their early post war planes? Also do any of you guys know what the headliner material was? What I took out looked like 1950s or 1960s perforated (kind of) plastic sheet that was rotted and falling apart. The 41 seemed to have bits of a really nice fluffy surface cotton fabric that looked like it would get stained by anything that touched it.

Ideas? Pictures maybe?

Hank

[3Dreaming]

A wool broadcloth for the headliner material. Not sure on the carpet pieces. Do they show any signs of having been glued or folded around a corner? Maybe glued to one of the lower cable covers.

[Hank Jarrett]

Carpet is glued to a stiff card stock (like all the rest of interior, (the inside door covers for instance). Door covers do not look like they were glued in and the covers have old screw holes that look like they held the upholstery to the frame but there are no holes in the frame. The doors were crushed when the plane was destroyed and were rebuilt pretty extensively so the holes were probably sealed shut and ground smooth (hey, it was a LOOOONG time ago!) The "strange" pieces inside faces are shown in the second photo. They seem to have been mounted flat with no signs of ever being bent in a curve. If you look at the left one there are marks from rubbing on tubes from the top (pointed end) along the RH edge that curve down in an arc and back up at the lower RH point. The right one has a rub mark in an arc from about the middle to the right and then curved back down past the "slot" towards the lower point. There looks like glue "damage" on the right one but just worn paper on the left one. Also looks like a wear mark cross ways about 1/3 of the way down in the photo from rubbing on a tube. I haven't found ANY place in the plane with tubes in that configuration!

This plane DOES have a lot of "strange" things in it that don't seem to have been done that way in production but she is one of the two pre-production prototypes used for development after WW-II. Lots of nice things and a few really DUMB ones! Restoring those that didn't get on the production planes were a manufacturing nightmare. The factory skylight is BEAUTIFUL but was a ROYAL PAIN to reproduce! I can see why they gave up on it! If you aren't a master cabinet maker (or aren't willing to build it multiple times copying the glued together bits of smashed up wood like I did) you won't be able to make it. Worth it, but I would never do it again!

Hank