I called Tom Knauff yesterday and this is the summary
of our conversation:

1) He got a lot of responses to his email but nobody
committed firmly to
send his / her glider to Slovakia. Firm commitment
means in his mind to have
the money ready and be willing to take the glider to
Tom's gliderport
2) He is doing this because he wants to refinish one
of his own gliders. He
needs that glider back by early spring though. Now
it is to late for him to
send it and get it back on time, so he is going to
wait until next fall
3) The cost to refinish a standard class glider is
$7000 to $8000
4) The ideal is to ship three gliders per container.
This drives the
shipping cost down to ~$1500 per glider. More gliders
per container would
require difficult packing
5) In this Slovakia shop they can refinish either with
gelcoat or
polyurethane. He got the reference from Shremp Hirth
and apparently they
make a great job

If someone is ready to commit send me an email and
we can go back to Tom. He
sounded like he would help

Best regards

Miguel


At 21:06 25 November 2003, Bob Mowry wrote:
Tom Knauff sent out email about doing a bulk shipment
of gliders to
Europe for refinishing. The cost (including shipping)
is way better
than what you'll ever see here in the US. I asked
the guys at
Gehrlein's how much they'd charge to refinish my Std
Cirrus: $25K,
which is just ever so slighty above the purchase price


You should contact him if you are interested (and can
be without your
glider for that period of time).

-bob