Well, I will probably need to take off at least part of the skin in order to rebuild the servo connections, reinstall the ailerons and rudder, and add flaps and retracts, right? Can I just cut small holes to install what I need, then patch?

OR, should I go ahead and reskin the plane in a lighter balsa (3/32 or 1/16) then recover with skinning cloth.

I'm tempted to reskin it, since that will also give me a chance to reglue all the joins and such (the plane is almost 15 years older than I am), as well as make it a lot easier to do work on it. I'd also like to make it a little bit lighter, but it sounds like that's not too big a deal. On the other hand, reskinning sounds like it would be pretty difficult, even with the two experts i know advising me.

What're your thoughts?