Sign Company Refurbishes Then “Crashes” Vintage Plane

AHH, THE JOYS of owning a fabrication shop… I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again. If you have the equipment and the skill to build, the only limit is your imagination — and the sign industry is overflowing with all three. Over the years we have taken on many projects that were not sign-related. A lot of them nowhere close, but we have the tools, and we have the skilled craftsmen to create pretty much anything. And Lord, do sign people have the imagination — twisted as it may be.

So, when one of Rick’s best skydiving buddies, Denis Neal, came to us six years ago to remodel an old, beat-down food truck he’d purchased from what I could only imagine was the county dump, we jumped right in and fabricated, sanded, painted and wrapped it into an incredible piece of art. He wanted it to look like a war plane, and we landed it right on target.

Years later we built a custom “airplane wing” bar top for his backyard aeronautical-themed shed/bar. Not stopping there, he built a beautiful wood deck, complete with a flat-top griddle and a Big Green Egg grill to complete his cookout experience. But “complete” is not a word in Denis’s vocabulary, so he purchased a 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza fuselage and trailered it straight to our shop.

His request? Turn it into a WWII P-40 Warhawk, and then crash it into the side of his shed. Uhhhh… what? But wait, there’s more! He also wanted to rebuild the interior, so his guests could actually sit in the cockpit, and he wanted to cut a hole in its side to create a slide-out compartment that would house an Ooni outdoor pizza oven. (You can’t make this stuff up, people.)

Upon closer inspection, we discovered there was no interior. No dashboard, seat, joystick or even a cabin itself. This was just a 77-year-old aluminum tube filled with leaves and 40 years of funk. No tail sections, no windows and no way we’re gonna accept this project. But it was for our boy Denis, so while not fully committing, we didn’t send him down the road empty-handed.

But this is a signshop, a business that needs to feed its people, and we’re busy. So the tuna can got pushed to the side — again and again — until more than two years had passed. Denis and his wife were still buying Papa Johns pizza and wondering if they were ever going to fire up that Ooni.

2024 brought a renewed vigor to us and lead fabricator Steve Pass got to work. Of course, get a buncha fabricators together and the ideas start flying. A new mill-finish aluminum cabin was fashioned, a moving joystick was created, a bench seat, and a new dashboard complete with backlit gauges were installed. Steve cut two holes in the side and built the slide-out oven tray and propane storage area.

We then cut and heated clear ⅛-in. Lexan into shape and riveted it to all window holes. The upright tail fin was cut from 2-in. HDU, hard-coated and mounted to the plane. Four flip switches on the dash control the gauges, a blinking red taillight, a blue interior cabin LED (for ambiance), and a flashing red light inside the crashed nose, complete with a fog machine, ’cause you can’t have a crashed plane without smoke!

Then it was off to the paint department where Rene Mendez and crew painted it in matte camo, P-40 style, and Tim Jones added some vinyl graphics to complete the transformation. Finally, we trailered it to the site and “crashed” it onto pre-installed base plates and concrete footers. Watch our YouTube episode to see it all unfold!