Gents, as I am on summer break and my wife only arrives tomorrow (bringing home Stirling aftershaves from the US, yay) I’ve been dabbling and thought I’d share what I have been doing of late.
I am on an eternal razor case building journey. All my life I have been fascinated with old wood boxes so when I dove into DE vintages I immediately started considering how they could be stored and transported in style and safety.
The following are my 2 favorites, and I just wanted to share as I know that some of you guys are also into building carrying cases for your razors.
But first the disclaimer - I have never been a handyman. My older brother took all the talents in that department. But now, past 50, I have decided to do handyman projects anyway. They will never be perfect but I love doing them, and thankfully I have a low threshold for accepting the flawed outcomes
. So if you zoom in on the pics you will definitely see flaws, but overall they are pretty ok for me.
Anyways - these are the projects:
PROJECT 1: The 4 razor box to store my 4 absolute favorite razors
A while back I found a beautiful 100 yr old wooden dovetailed box originally built for carrying measuring equipment. The measurements of the box were perfect razor size, so I decided to varnish the exterior (I love boats varnish) and rebuild the interior to carry 4 razors in style. Below is the result. Alongside this, I had a blast thinking about which 4 razors would then live inthere. Because I decided that this would be the box I will rush out of the house in case of fire. This is the case to hold the only 4 razors I would keep if I should ever decide to become a minimalist.
The 3 spots were long since taken, and last Friday I finally received a gorgeous silver New RFB #77 from Chris Evatt so I could fill the 4th spot. So here they are, my 4 absolute shave darlings (or the FAB 4 as they are all Brits) in their future home.
PROJECT 2: The 2-razor Big Fellow carrying case
A couple of months ago I started a thread with questions on how to rebuild a Big Fellow case. I have been absolutely smitten with these old wooden dovetail cases ever since seeing one for the first time. And especially when I noticed that actually it should be possible to fit not 1 but 2 razors in there! - Which I would really love as I always like to carry 2 razors with me when travelling.
And because I never really had seen one of these cases being offered alone without the razor in it, the first item of the day was to post a BST thread to attract a donor for the project. Immediately a kind fellow B&B’er pointed me to a specimen having just been put up on the US bay. It was posted as “structurally excellent” but with exterior wear - which clearly was the case (see below pic). In other words it fit the bill perfectly so I jumped in and luckily I won.
Now, a couple of days ago I finally got around to work on it. I really worried about how to get the interior wood piece out but when it arrived this piece was loose already - perfect! ...However other parts of the case were loose too so I had to reglue it back together again.
Then, as always, boats varnish to the exterior. And then I discovered that I could actually re-use the interior piece if I cut it up real carefully. This would ensure also that the spring for the lock would stay mounted.
So that is what I did and the below is the result. The tricky part was to cut out the fabric pieces to follow the inner wood structure and look nice. I did NOT do a 100% job of that. Did not cut well nor glue well, had to regroup midway as the bottom piece I’d made did not work. So no pics of that
. However it is still ok to use I think. And I can always redo it if I want to.
Hope you’ll enjoy the pics and maybe get inspired.
Happy summer shaves, all!
I am on an eternal razor case building journey. All my life I have been fascinated with old wood boxes so when I dove into DE vintages I immediately started considering how they could be stored and transported in style and safety.
The following are my 2 favorites, and I just wanted to share as I know that some of you guys are also into building carrying cases for your razors.
But first the disclaimer - I have never been a handyman. My older brother took all the talents in that department. But now, past 50, I have decided to do handyman projects anyway. They will never be perfect but I love doing them, and thankfully I have a low threshold for accepting the flawed outcomes
. So if you zoom in on the pics you will definitely see flaws, but overall they are pretty ok for me.Anyways - these are the projects:
PROJECT 1: The 4 razor box to store my 4 absolute favorite razors
A while back I found a beautiful 100 yr old wooden dovetailed box originally built for carrying measuring equipment. The measurements of the box were perfect razor size, so I decided to varnish the exterior (I love boats varnish) and rebuild the interior to carry 4 razors in style. Below is the result. Alongside this, I had a blast thinking about which 4 razors would then live inthere. Because I decided that this would be the box I will rush out of the house in case of fire. This is the case to hold the only 4 razors I would keep if I should ever decide to become a minimalist.
The 3 spots were long since taken, and last Friday I finally received a gorgeous silver New RFB #77 from Chris Evatt so I could fill the 4th spot. So here they are, my 4 absolute shave darlings (or the FAB 4 as they are all Brits) in their future home.
PROJECT 2: The 2-razor Big Fellow carrying case
A couple of months ago I started a thread with questions on how to rebuild a Big Fellow case. I have been absolutely smitten with these old wooden dovetail cases ever since seeing one for the first time. And especially when I noticed that actually it should be possible to fit not 1 but 2 razors in there! - Which I would really love as I always like to carry 2 razors with me when travelling.
And because I never really had seen one of these cases being offered alone without the razor in it, the first item of the day was to post a BST thread to attract a donor for the project. Immediately a kind fellow B&B’er pointed me to a specimen having just been put up on the US bay. It was posted as “structurally excellent” but with exterior wear - which clearly was the case (see below pic). In other words it fit the bill perfectly so I jumped in and luckily I won.
Now, a couple of days ago I finally got around to work on it. I really worried about how to get the interior wood piece out but when it arrived this piece was loose already - perfect! ...However other parts of the case were loose too so I had to reglue it back together again.
Then, as always, boats varnish to the exterior. And then I discovered that I could actually re-use the interior piece if I cut it up real carefully. This would ensure also that the spring for the lock would stay mounted.
So that is what I did and the below is the result. The tricky part was to cut out the fabric pieces to follow the inner wood structure and look nice. I did NOT do a 100% job of that. Did not cut well nor glue well, had to regroup midway as the bottom piece I’d made did not work. So no pics of that
. However it is still ok to use I think. And I can always redo it if I want to.Hope you’ll enjoy the pics and maybe get inspired.
Happy summer shaves, all!
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