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Recovering a Skybolt

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StuBob

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New here. Perhaps this should be in the fabric forum, but......

I have the opportunity to buy a roughly 30-yr-old Skybolt from a friend. I've flown it quite a bit and it's nearly perfect, as far as I can tell.

However, the owner says it's going to need fabric soon. I'll admit I'm not sure if that's the whole airplane or just the flight surfaces.

I'm considering buying this airplane as a project, taking it home and recovering it. I have no fabric experience, but I'm not afraid of tools. So, a couple of questions:
1) Do I need Steen plans to do this safely? Taking everything apart, it would seem like a good idea to have plans for putting it back together.
2) Say I wind up recovering the whole thing. What are we looking at in time and money? He got a quote some time ago for $25-30k to do it professionally. That's out of the question.

Thanks in advance. And thanks for a great site!
 

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