1:1 Spitfire K9817 Cockpit Build

[Tony Hill]

and final....

 

[fubar57]

Welcome back Darryl. As always, great to see your work. There's a new member here looking at building a 1:1 cockpit but I can't recall where the thread is

 

[Tony Hill]

Thanks Geo, good to be back and I will try to do some updating... I got sucked into the Facebook thing after photo****** pulled their little stunt but am going to do a couple of the forums as well now.

I have seen the other project. Nice work!

 

[Tony Hill]

Seat built by Ross and as received...

 

[Tony Hill]

Then I really had to do SOMETHING towards it

Seat, adding the gates for the seat raise gear and painting chosen colour of black.

(Oh ... only the top 4 gate bits are part of the seat assembly, the other pieces are radiator lever gates and a Landing Lamp Unit lever)

 

[Tony Hill]

And finishing off with fitted leather rip chord protector..... (which was a REAL mongrel of a job!!)

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Fantastic work Daryl! If you knew what we paid for our new old stock Mosquito throttle you might be tempted to go into production. A very authentic looking piece so well done.

 

[Airframes]

Beaut work Darryl.

 

[Tony Hill]

Thanks Wojtek, Andy & Terry.

Andy, even at $20 an hour I think I would struggle to recover on them
Though I think I would be a lot faster next time. Lots of learning to do on the throttle... different techniques etc, but useful for other pieces too.

 

[Crimea_River]

Yeah, I can believe that. We looked at the possibility of having one made but thought there would be hundreds of hours of casting and machining involved. The one we got, though pricey, was still the way to go.

 

[Gnomey]

Great work so far!

 

[Tony Hill]

Thanks Hugh!!

Andy, yes, the wartime production was geared to churning them out, by people who did that all day, every day. We can never match those efficiencies now!
even something as simple as the two throttle friction wheels took hours of machining and a very large amount of material had to be removed....which means large bar stock and high cost. Materials cost alone was around $500 at a guess, including the resin U/C Warning unit.

The seat consumed $100 worth of good quality paint from primer up!

Real parts have become very expensive, not least because of the "rebuild" market but they are a good option for most high quality builds, even static.
Remade parts, if you can't or don't have time to make them yourself (it took me two years to make all the throttle) are almost uneconomic.

 

[Airframes]

Heck, your cockpit alone, not counting the sim 'avionics', has probably cost at least twice as much as a complete Spit at original finished price !
Well worth it though, and a great job so far.

 

[Tony Hill]

To close to be funny Terry

 

[Tony Hill]

A bit of progress, even if still only on small parts. The 1930's Smiths motorbike horn used on the Spitfire as the Undercarriage Warning Horn.
This has been scratch built with the exception of Ross' fine 3D printed top plate.
The top plate was painted with a high shine chrome paint and then distressed(the position in the cockpit I suspect meant that it would have been liable to bumps, rubbing and scratches each time the seat was removed or the Pneumatic bottles were maintained).
The casing is made of 4" irrigation pipe and then the base plate from high impact plastic, machined to fit into the casing as a rimmed plug. The seam was filled with sandable glue.
The pipe, luckily, has the OD which exactly matches the interior dimensions of a Milo tin. So the top of the tin, where the lid fits on, was cut off and interference fit (with glue to support) onto the pipe, forming the rim for attachment of the face plate.
The mounting bracket and terminal block are made of aluminium sheet sandwiched together and the terminal posts of ali rod, threaded to take the screws salvaged from a broken 543 switch. They were made with a 6mm base and 4mm post to lock them into the terminal block "sandwich".
The casing was painted in a fairly thick coating of black paint and then sprinkled with aluminium dust and flakes before being given a final heavy coat of high gloss black. This gives it the appearance of having been cast like the early types rather than "stamped" out like the later models.
The plate at the top of the mounting bracket was shaped with the Jenny to make the strengthening creases. Some nice stainless bolts completed the assembly.
I'm still working on a good Smiths logo and how we will put it on. Ross may be able to build it into the 3d print or I may just get them engraved. I'd rather see the proper raised image in 3D though.

 

[Crimea_River]

Excellent!

 

[Crimea_River]

Excellent!

 

[Tony Hill]

Thanks Andy! I'm quite chuffed with it!

 

[Crimea_River]

As you should be!