So, as I said I would, I managed to work on the Spitfire a bit yesterday afternoon. I didn't get anything done Thursday; the afternoon was spent dealing with contractors, but it's all good as (knock on wood) everything is going well with regard to the basement repairs/restoration.
I worked on making the seat harness. This is my first attempt at a home-made seat harness, so hopefully it will be worth the effort. It's still not complete, but it's probably 80% at this point. I have to glue the last of the shoulder straps in place, paint said straps, and paint and glue the buckles. Oh, and simulate the adjustment holes in the shoulder straps. I used the foil lid from a Motts applesauce container, and smoothed out the texture with the round plastic corner of an old cell phone case. I have wine bottle foil, as well as the foil from a lovely bottle of single-malt, but I wanted to see if the applesauce foil worked. I think it'll serve just fine, if a tad thin.
I'm trying to represent the Sutton "Q" harness. It won't be perfect, but I didn't feel like driving an hour to the LHS to pick up the PE sets...and since I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd make my own.
The upper shoulder straps are simply placed on top in this picture as I'm trying to gauge length before gluing. The lower shoulder straps are over-length on purpose, and will be trimmed to length after the cockpit is mostly assembled.
The straps look a tad stiff in this photo particularly, but I am confident I can get them to drape fairly well and worked into a reasonably realistic representation of a Sutton Harness. The holes at the end of the strap at the right of the picture are practice holes. I've found that by placing the foil strip on the cutting mat and pushing a pin (the type that come in the hundreds in a dress shirt package) into the strip, then lightly running a smooth surface such as a round X-Acto knife handle over the holes, it creates a slightly raised ring around the hole. Painted brass, I think these might look sharp as a representation of the grommets in the shoulder straps. The same treatment will be given to the lap belts, as well. I did try to take a picture of the effect, but it simply didn't turn out. Oh well...
This is a picture of the lap belts, again over length, to be trimmed later. I included a ruler next to them for scale. The only information I was able to dig up on the dimensions of the Sutton harness components was that the straps were about 2 inches wide. So, I grabbed my 1:48 scale ruler, and found there was a marking for 3 scale-inces. I glued a small piece of .010 styrene strip between two fresh X-Acto blades and this gave me a way to cut strips a size that was consistently slightly less than 3 scale-inches, so I'm calling the straps 2 scale-inches in width. 
The buckles were formed by tightly wrapping small-guage copper wire around another piece of styrene strip, cutting the coils with a knife blade, then using various tweezers and almost all of my patience to tighten the buckles and make them a bit more "square". Heh. While I was at it, I attempted to create a representation of the triangular quick-release latch piece that held all the straps together when the pilot was all strapped in.
The buckles will be pre-painted before assembly (excepting the lap straps), then I'll paint/weather/wear the straps as best I can, then glue it into the seat before placing the cockpit in the fuselage.
Thanks for viewing, and I will be back, hopefully sooner as opposed to later!
TF