Recently I got fascinated with box making.
Prototypes:
1. Simple, flat lid box
2. Simple box with a rounded lid overlapping the base. A practice with bending the leather and making a sharp bend.
3. Final version, trying to look like a chest as much as possible (Work in progress...)
Goals:
1. Perfect box stitching
2. Chest-like look
3. Real reinforcing straps properly stitched (It makes the manufacturing process much more complicated, trust me on that)
4. Nice, rounded, consistent lid shape
5. Lid with a well defined, sharp bend near the lid.
6. Solid, strong stitching making a full use of the softness of the leather.
7. Perfect fit on the lid with additional sheets of leather which help to index the lid on top of the base (In progress)
8. Properly finished, nice to touch corners
In this post I concentrate on the last prototype (that black monster)
Data:
5mm thich cow veg tan, shoulder for the outer shell
1mm goat chrome tanned leather as lining
Base and the lid are both lined.
Reinforcing straps stitched mainly for aesthetics.
What I don’t like about my chest:
1. Straps on the base are only glued because… I forgot to stitch them in before I glued the lining :(
2. For the first time I used very spongy, 1.0mm goat chrome tanned leather. Lining compressed slightly when I was doing my 45 degree cuts. As a result, on the inside the panels of box do not fit that well.
3. Doing a butt-stitch on the lid: I set the stitching marks and make holes on the main part of the lid, bend it, then glue it to the sides, then by looking at position of holes in on the lid, I make holes in the side panel freehand and stitch it altogether. Obviously stitching on the side is not that pretty, but it’s hard for me to get another manufacturing process:
4. Butt-stitch also makes the side panels and the main lid part deform slightly. I need to work on getting the holes properly angled to mitigate it.
4. No metal. The box is 150mm x 110mm x 130mm (WidthxDepthxHeight). Having these sizes it think it would make it much more interesting to have brass hinges, buckels on the straps, some closures or handles to lift the lid.
5. On the inside of the lid even through the lining you can see the deformation of leather from straps. I think next time I will use some thick sponge/foam create a buffer and sort of mitigate that problem. (look along the orange line)
6. I think it would be more functional if it had a removable deck inside it.
7. It's tricky to predict and draw the shape of lid's sides. Thats why I first made the sharp bends, then formed the lid curve, put it on the base and that's how I got the shape of the sides. You can see the difference to the predicted shape. It's all about leather thickness and unpredictable sharp bend near the base.
8. After stitching the lid I wanted to glue additional panels on the inside, to the sides of the lid. They would help to index the lid onto the base. I could have cut them earlier because now it's hard to get the shape right to get the perfect fit with the lid:
What I do like about my chest
1. Leather selection: dense, meaty and heavy shoulder with softy feel on the outside. Helps to pull off a nice looking box-stitching
2. Shape, looks and proportions – I feel like the chest does look solid and powerful
3. Corner finish – I managed to glue the corners and then burnish them properly which gives a nice to touch, slick surface on the corners.
4. Resulted in: knowledge, courage, skills and MISTAKES! :D
All in all, It’s been a great journey with these boxes. None of them perfect, none of them are going to be sold, but each of them consecutively got more and more complicated. I gained experience, skill and I know what’s left to practice. I decided to create such posts to show you what problems I faced. Maybe my experience and conclusion will be beneficial for some of you. I received help from many of you on this forum so I decided it's time to give something back. Especially that box making is not that popular on the Internet
What do you think about it? How would you describe my manufacturing decisions and problems? Maybe you have another suggestions for the aesthetics or construction? All comments appreciated.
Great thanks to Phil for his box-making tutorial. It was the inspiration for me!
I love this. Great insights and thanks for sharing!