I'm surprised it's not more common in the warbird world. It seems like on the deep restorations that's basically what they're doing. Looking a build logs it looks like huge percentages of the aircraft are built from scratch.

I know. Even more problematic, complete designs don't exist for the aircraft. Often the tooling and jigs defined the design, and those are lost.

The restorers who do make parts from scratch would do the rest of the community a service by preparing proper drawings for them.

I know a group that decided to make an Me262 from scratch. They borrowed one from a museum in order to make the copy.