amateur restoration of a french gillette federal case

[Wombat ESQ]

Very nicely done.

I had a creamy fuzzy liner, soaked it off with ethanol, got every last rust stain out of it, i was so proud, dried it, it was sparkling, went to reassemble, [censored] thing had shrunk!!

rust ? .... Citric acid [supermarket] Phosphoric acid [concrete aisle of hardware shop] and good old Molasses [cow feed shop, by the 100's of gallons], a pinch of this a dollop of that and rust will run away.
slower is coke a cola [phosphoric] and lemon juice.
or look for any black sauces in the supermarket with [330] or [338] in them, liberally mix ALL of them together, anything black, this I found while making jerky and not washing the skillet immediately, damn, did it clean the gunk off the skillet.

 

[airmech]

WOW!!! What fantastic work!!! I really love how you covered both of the cases and the finished product is great!!! I learned something in that I didn’t know about the leather darkening in places when wet forming!!!

Tom

 

[Four for Luck]

Thank you!

 

[huck1680]

Really, really well done. I used to do a fair amount of leather work with belts and a few wallets so I have an idea of some of the challenges you faced. Again, terrific work.

 

[akortekaas]

Got some cheap synthetic satin in so i decided to replace the trim piece on the federal case.
The new stuff is way thinner than the old stuff and almost see through and doesn't take glue well so i had to do 2 layers but it kinda worked in the end.

I also found the proper blade box for this case and is on it's way

 

[akortekaas]

I wasn't really happy with the trim so i examined the original piece a bit closer.
One interesting thing i've noticed about Gillette is that they seem to like to use metric a lot.
The paper strip unfolded is exactly as long as the narrow side of a sheet of A4 card stock and 25mm wide.

I did a burn test on the fabric and it is most likely a plant based fabric, most likely cotton but it could be linen or flax, I'd need to burn the whole thing to be more sure lol.
Cotton "satin" is apparently called "Sateen"
I've tried to count the threads and i think thread count is around 200.
I'm no expert on fabrics and i don't know if it's regular cotton or treated some way to make it shiny because cotton bed sheets i once had were not shiny at all but they were printed so that process may have removed a natural luster if that was present.

The caliper is set to 1/4 inch.

After a closer look i discovered that the paper piece was folded the fabric was glued onto the piece flat and then it was folded.
Since i had problems with ripples in the fabric in the first attempt i hoped doing it the original way would look better and it did by a lot!

I'm tempted to find the proper Sateen and Velvet and redo the whole thing now lol.
But then i'd have to redo the outside too and were am i going to find this red embossed paper....

 

[akortekaas]

2 attempts at making a new blade box for the fat Tech case.
The one on the left is the most resent one, it seems my laser printer doesn't like thicker paper.
The one in the middle is the original.

 

[akortekaas]

Here's the image of the Gillette blade box for those interested in printing their own.
I made it a bit neather and added a bit of yellowing back compared to the one above.
It could be a lot better but i don't have any pristine ones lying around to take apart so i just scanned mine a bunch of times and pieced it together as best as i could.

it's 600dpi.

 

[akortekaas]

I've been working on some gillette logo's so that i can possibly have them made into brass stamps and hot foil stamp them in the leather and perhaps emboss/print them in the velvet.

If anyone is interested in the vector files just send me a DM and i'll email it or something since i don't think i can upload svg's here.

 

[malocchio]

Fantastic restorations !

 

[akortekaas]

I found some hinges on aliexpress that looked like the original hinges and the springs work after bending them tighter! (eyeglasses case spring hinge)