Hello PMs
I had a look on the internet to see if there was anything available out there already. There is a 3D printable spade grip for a Spitfire which I downloaded from the free site and started to print. The spade grip itself is surprisingly good but it was out of scale and missing details in several areas. The main one for me was the Dunlop Crackle Grip. It was good but not good enough for what I wanted.
3D Printed Dunlop Crackle - Not perfect
According to the net, the Dunlop Crackle grip technique has been lost as to how it was manufactured!! I spent some time with modelling clay and used the first 3D print (to model it on) at trying to manufacture the crackle grip effect. I was happy with the result.
As the clay dried it cracked, pretty much like the real rubber does on grips, see above.
I download Fusion 360 design software and spent the next week designing a new grip as close to the real thing as possible. I looked on the net and discovered the grip for a Hawker Typhoon was AH8005. I found a few good examples on spitfirespares.com. I used these pics and info on the net to to design my own.
Enjoy