757 Tack Molding

I started installing the replacement tack molding on the 757 today. I acquired plenty of 8/4 poplar and machined it at home, then brought it out today. First, holes are drilled in the wood, but they need to clear the rivets, so I couldn't do that in advance. One change is that the original wood was attached using flat head machine screws, but I switched to round head -- partly because that's all I could find, and because they don't try to split the wood the way flat head screws do. Drilling and tapping holes in the metal was the hard part. Having worked on wood cars for so long, it's been years since I had to tap holes in steel. In any case, the first two sections are mostly done, and that's about 2/5 of the whole length. It's going together about as well as could be expected. Pete Galayda let me use some primer for priming the backs of the two pieces seen in the picture. It will be great to have this Silverliner back in operation.