Rapierstar, the UK and Ireland’s largest supplier of specialist fasteners to the window and door industry, has supported the technical team at Cotswold Architectural Products during the development of an innovative, multi-functional friction stay to be launched in 2025, as part of its long-term partnership.

According to Cotswold, the new ‘Prestbury’ friction stay will offer three functions in a single product that will enable PVC-U fabricators to create casement windows with enhanced child safety through restricted opening, emergency egress and easy-cleaning capability. This multi-functionality will be enhanced by several additional features including a new metal end cap design and an offset vent/sash arm for superior compression and sealing to optimise air and water resistance.

Rapierstar supported Cotswold throughout the testing process to ensure the new product will comfortably meet the various standards associated with these three design objectives. For example, the friction stay’s child safety restrictor, which is designed to prevent finger traps, had to demonstrate it could meet rigorous UKAS testing standards. In addition, the stay had to confirm functionality, simply by depressing the catch, that enables a window to be fully open at an 85° angle and ensure a clear 450mm opening for Building Regulations compliance.

Cotswold’s business development manager, Alan Hartley, said: “Performance of our hardware has always been important, to ensure quality, reliability and performance to our customers and this has been challenged in recent years with the rise of bigger and heavier windows. This could be due to a design requirement or a legislative change demanding improved thermal efficiency / reduction in U-Values or acoustic glass specifications for noise reduction, which may require thicker and heavier glass, even triple glazing.

“We have carried out ‘health checks’ on the load capacity of our friction stays in recent months, in conjunction with specific requests of customers or systems houses, to ensure our products can meet these new demands. Our newly refurbished test centre at Cotswold HQ in Cheltenham has facilitated this, and the results have been outstanding – once again highlighting why the importance of the fixings used cannot be understated.

“The strength and ability to withstand increased loads is really down to a combination of hinge, profile support and the retention of the fixing used.”

Mark Calpin, technical consultant at Rapierstar, commented: “We will always go the extra mile to help hardware manufacturers achieve the performance they are seeking with their products and, as is the case with Cotswold’s R&D centre, we can even provide a full suite of fasteners in a dedicated rack. This makes all our relevant fasteners readily available, meaning that technical teams can experiment and test with different approaches to window and door assembly with ease.”