I have read bits and bobs about this project, but this is the first pic I've seen. There is a guy in Canada working to return a late production Mosquito to flight, but this new build could really open the door for others to follow. Lets hope so.

Can you just see the "new" Mossie with a pair of P&W PT-6 engines instead of the Merlins?

Please no. Whatever next? That would be sacrilege.

Jets on a Mossie? Surely thats a Canberra?

Not sure this is quite accurate Mark.

Please no. Whatever next? That would be sacrilege.

Give it a stars and stripes paint scheme and send it hurtling round some pylons at Reno?

Why make the thing out of wood?  I had thought the only reason for that was shortage of materials and that it was an older design.  Surely they could make a metal skin for it...   ???

To cover the wing structure and add strength, de Havilland woodworkers built two top wing skins and one bottom skin using birch plywood. The top skins had to carry the heaviest load so the designers also beefed them up with birch or Douglas fir stringers cut into fine strips and glued and screwed between the two skins. The bottom skin was also reinforced with stringers. Together the top and bottom skins multiplied the strength of the internal spars and ribs. A Mosquito wing could withstand rigorous combat maneuvering at high G-loads when the airplane often carried thousands of additional pounds of fuel and weapons. To maintain strength, trim weight, and speed fabrication time, the entire wing was finished as a single piece, wingtip to wingtip, with no break where the wing bisected the fuselage. A finished and painted wing was light and strong with a smooth surface unblemished by drag-inducing nail or rivet heads.

De Havilland engineers and technicians used generally the same techniques to build the Comet, Albatross, and Mosquito wings out of wood and plywood. When they designed and built the fuselage, however, they copied the methods and materials employed to build the Albatross fuselage. This airliner was the product of the brilliant mind of Arthur E. Hagg, de Havilland's Chief Draftsman in 1937. He left the company that same year but his ideas lived on in the Mosquito. Hagg created a light, strong, very streamlined structure by sandwiching 9.5 mm (three-eighths inch) Ecuadorian balsa wood between Canadian birch plywood skins that varied in thickness from 4.5 mm to 6 mm (about ¼ inch). The plywood/balsa/plywood sandwich was formed inside concrete molds of each fuselage half, and each mold held seven birch plywood formers reinforced with spruce blocks, plus bulkheads, floors, and other structural members. As the glue cured, metal clamps held the skin layers tight to the mold. Technicians finished the edge of each half of the fuselage with male and female wedge joints as fitters attached wiring and other equipment to the inner walls. Final fuselage assembly was reminiscent of a typical plastic model airplane kit as the two halves were glued and screwed together. Fabricators completed the final step in building the fuselage when they covered it with Mandapolam.