[overlander64]

Greetings Doug!

Matching a blonded finish from the 1950s is quite a challenge. My experience has been with restoring furniture rather than with my Airstream. There are two approaches that I have used.

When starting with bare new or stripped original wood, it is generally easiest to find a paint store with access to a line of high-quality stains and purchase two or three small cans of their blonding stains - - I started with light coats of the lightest stain first and if the color didn't build up quickly enough went with the progressively darker blonding stains until the desired color was achieved.

Repairs were somewhat more involved as the blonding stain usually produced too much contrast with the surrounding original finish. With my furniture restorations, I used varnish with "tinting-pigment" (essentially artist colors) to tint thinned varnish then applied several coats of the varnish mixture until the repair area blended in with the surrounding finish - - again, it generally took several tries to get a close match of the original blonded finishes. I suspect that matching the blonding in an Airstream will be somewhat more challenging than the furniture that I worked with as the furniture hadn't been exposed to much sunlight.

Good luck with your finish repairs/restoration!

Kevin