Dave W. Hall got hooked by the allure of flying machines after a family friend took him up in a little Cessna 172 for his first flight when he was about 8. “I had a lot of model toy airplanes,” said Hall, who grew up in the 1970s on a small farm in Ohio. “What little boy doesn’t hold out his arms and pretend he’s flying?”
Today he is co-founder and owner of MotoArt Studios, a Torrance, California, business that sands, polishes, paints and redesigns retired airplane parts that began with an old propeller destined for the junkyard that was turned into a free-standing sculpture.
“We can’t get rid of this,” Hall recalled his then-partner saying at the time. “A light bulb went off,” Hall said. “We can preserve aviation history.”
The average life span of a commercial jet is about 25 years, and something like 12,000 of them and other aircraft are expected to reach the end of life in the next two decades. That is an average of about 600 airplanes each year, according to the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association. What happens to all those planes when they are no longer economically viable and ready to come out of service?
At MotoArt, fuselages become conference tables. Cowlings, the metal coverings of an engine, are made into beds. Wings are turned into dramatic, one-of-a-kind corporate executive desks. Windows
Article source: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/from-the-sky-to-your-home-airplane-parts-get-a-second-life/