This week saw the arrival of our new Spitfire Mk.IX Windscreen Brow mould. That’s the clever little curved glass screen that sits above the Armoured Windshield.

Our previous mould was very nice but did not survive the journey by ship to Ireland, the MDF base having picked up moisture and developed a hairline crack in the finish. Not serious, but enough to create a light mark on the vacuum pulled clear acrylic.

Hairline crack visible on original mould

It presented an ideal opportunity to relook the original design and see if improvements could be made. We were assisted in this by Brett, one of our build license holders who also runs an amazing prototyping and restoration outfit near Melbourne, Australia called RRET (Restoration Reverse Engineering Technologies). Brett has an original complete windscreen and did a scan for us by which we were able to make a comparison of our design to the original.

Brett’s build with original Spitfire MkIX windscreen

While there is obviously some difference in functionality between a wartime cast armoured window and a replica for an Augmented Virtuality cockpit, the scan proved the accuracy of our design.

As a result we were able to refine our design before having a new mould made.

We commissioned a specialist tool and die maker in the UK to fashion a new one out of aluminium. This was cast in rough form before being CNC machined and mounted. The result is a work of art.

The finished new brow mould

The mould has been sent to our vacuum forming supplier and we are very excited to see the result in acrylic in the next week or two!

The HFS Spitfire Mk.IX Cockpit Build Manual comprises 520 pages. As many can attest, this is a lot of printing. We have now made the task easier for you by publishing the manual in A4 soft cover book form. It has turned out to be a magnificent work that is equally at home on your coffee table as it is in the workshop.

Pricing is €35 which compares very favourably with if you were to have your local copy shop run off an (unbound) print (expect around €70). Shipping will be charged at cost . The printing is done at Lightning Source and shipped direct from the UK.

The book is only available to Build License Holders.

Contact us for your copy.