Albatros Fabric Research
11 April 2008 by Andrew Pearce. Aircraft 1914 - 1918, Collection, Conservation, Aircraft Conservation. Comments (4)
The Memorial has been able to gain access to substantial amounts of the original fabric, which was removed from the Albatros during the 1960’s restoration with the exception of the rudder and the ailerons. Significant analysis of this material has been carried out in order to determine the correct details for fabric colours, panel widths and orientations, seam widths, rib stitching and the dimensions of rib tapes.Photographic evidence shows the starboard aileron to have been covered in lozenge on both upper and lower surfaces. The upper surface of the port aileron appears to have been painted to match the upper camouflage finish while the rudder was overpainted to match the fuselage finish.
With the exception of the underside of the upper wing where the lozenge was left exposed, all fabric surfaces were overpainted. The original fabric is a mixture of undyed and five colour lozenge printed linen. The underside of the upper wing is stitched with the seam running spanwise rather than chordwise. All lozenge surfaces have lavender coloured rib and seam tapes. The tapes appear to be mass produced and mechanically cut in standard widths of 20mm and 30mm. Surrounding the radiator installation 7mm lavender tapes are also present.
Similar bulk cut tapes in undyed fabric are found on the assemblies covered in undyed linen with the exception of the upper surface of the top wing, where the lavender tapes are continued from the lower side.
The Albatros is being re-covered using five colour lozenge linen printed in Germany in 1991. Comparison of this linen against non light-exposed samples of the original Albatros fabric, either from beneath seams or where it was used as rubbing strips on the leading edges of lower wings and tailplanes show it to be a very accurate match both in lozenge pattern, lozenge overlap and colour for both upper and lower fabrics.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:18 am
What a fabulous project!Your forensic inspection of the original aircraft fabric covering calls for a new combined term, ‘archaeo-conservation’, as you are excavating the past! I look forward to further installments.
April 27th, 2008 at 9:08 am
May I ask where you acquired this 5 color lozenge fabric? I am looking for such accurate lozenge fabric for a Fokker D.VII project.
Thanks, Gary Sewall
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 am
Dear Sirs:
Where can one buy this fabric?
Thank you,
Roger Delgado
August 1st, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Apologies for the delay in getting back to you Gary and Roger. Work on the aircraft has limited my blog time for the last few months.
As far as I’m aware, the fabric was only a limited production run for a Halberstadt project in the early 90’s and is long out of production. There is other lozenge available commercially today but it differs significantly on a number of the colours.