Presentation Box Colt 1851

[SIGP2101]

I made this one myself. It took me about 25 hours to complete it. Everything is solid walnut.
I am pleased with end result. I thought I would share. No power tools are used in this project, it is all hand made only. Little imperfections are desirable.

[SIGP2101]

Now I have to make one for Luger.

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Hello,

Very nice. You should be proud of your work. The old pistol is nice too!!

Best Regards,

[davidkachel]

They must be REALLY LITTLE imperfections. Nicely done.

[Edward Tinker]

very nice, well done!

[the gunman]

A true work of art.

[Lyn Islaub]

Very nice. You might consider going into production, as I would hazard to guess almost every one of us has a 'special' Luger we would like to see in a case as nice as this one.
Lyn

[SIGP2101]

Originally posted by Lyn Islaub
Very nice. You might consider going into production, as I would hazard to guess almost every one of us has a 'special' Luger we would like to see in a case as nice as this one.
Lyn

Certainly that is an idea, but the box like this would not come out cheap. It is labour intensive, and first class hardware was used. There are no â??made in chinaâ?� parts involved in building this box, and no power tools used. Why no power tools, simply because hands leave some character to it, and it so clearly distinguished from machine industrial work. Little imperfections are always present, and there are so common in boxes build in 19 century. There was no plywood used and there was no veneering applied to this box. It is been chiselled out of solid piece of walnut. Even dividers inside this box are made out of the same solid wood. No fast drying stains used on this box but just 8 coats of Tung oil. Inside compartments are covered in two kinds of felt, top and the bottom is real wool felt, very hard to find and very expensive, compartment dividers are covered in self adhesive felt you can get in craft stores.
I donâ??t know yet but idea was to built 10-20 of these boxes over the winter, and hit local gun show just to feel if there is a market for them. But every firearm would require custom built box accordingly. It will be a very hard to standardise/streamline production line. With amount of hours put in building something like this which will eventually go down with more boxes built, I would charge anywhere between 250-300 CAD for the Colt box, Luger Box would be probably 30% cheaper because it would be smaller and simpler and it would involve some machining to reflect appropriate time.
If people show some interest I may even get involved in building these boxes. The thing is I have full time job and two small kids with all that goes with it. I was able to build this one box within one month working only 1hour at the time during the evening. It was nice and relaxing work before bead time.

Thanks for your support, all of you. It is encouraging to see that people with real fine sense of quality (colectionars) see something worthwhile repeating. If anyone becomes interested in this project please drop me a line. It would be very curious to se how much of the interest this could generate.

[Fritzer]

Joe,

That is some very fine work on the case.
I have been scraping lots of example pictures for myself to plan a similar idea for my Grandad's Colt 1849 pocket, which I now have.
Mine has been beat up quite a bit, but you can just see the stagecoach scene on the cylinder if you look close.



I really like the lock detail on yours, and I'm always interested in the accessories, as mine came with none.
I like the idea of a powder flask, and a compartment for the caps.
I've seen others with a section for the lead ball moulds too.

It looks like you powder measure is a rimmed case, cut to the proper volume?

You have done a great job there, thanks for sharing.
Regards,
Fritz.

[George Anderson]

Excellent work Joe. I would love to have a Luger case made to the same standards. Problem is deciding which one. Such a case for a commercial artillery would be grand.

As a former counterfeiter of eighteenth century American furniture, I have a couple of thoughts you may want to ponder. If using black walnut, as you did, a light prefinish treatment with muric acid will add perhaps a hundred years of patina to the walnut. A great alternative wood is black cherry which begins to darken almost as soon as it's finished and develops an exquisite rich patina in as little as 5-8 years.

As far as power tools, the machine (steam driven) driven band saw was introduced into American furniture manufacture in 1840.

Really great work.

[SIGP2101]

Originally posted by Fritzer
Joe,

That is some very fine work on the case.
I have been scraping lots of example pictures for myself to plan a similar idea for my Grandad's Colt 1849 pocket, which I now have.
Mine has been beat up quite a bit, but you can just see the stagecoach scene on the cylinder if you look close.

I really like the lock detail on yours, and I'm always interested in the accessories, as mine came with none.
I like the idea of a powder flask, and a compartment for the caps.
I've seen others with a section for the lead ball moulds too.

You have done a great job there, thanks for sharing.
Regards,
Fritz.

That is one excellent Pocket model you got. I couldnâ??t resist showing you mine boxed version.

It looks like you powder measure is a rimmed case, cut to the proper volume?

Yes that is correct, it is my shooter and I built two different volume measurements for it out of 38-55 cases.

[SIGP2101]

Originally posted by George Anderson
Excellent work Joe. I would love to have a Luger case made to the same standards. Problem is deciding which one. Such a case for a commercial artillery would be grand.

As a former counterfeiter of eighteenth century American furniture, I have a couple of thoughts you may want to ponder. If using black walnut, as you did, a light prefinish treatment with muric acid will add perhaps a hundred years of patina to the walnut. A great alternative wood is black cherry which begins to darken almost as soon as it's finished and develops an exquisite rich patina in as little as 5-8 years.

Thanks for your input, just learned something new. I will try that method for sure. My goal here is not to make fakes, just quality boxes.

As far as power tools, the machine (steam driven) driven band saw was introduced into American furniture manufacture in 1840.

Really great work.

I certainly would not go to that extent in my effort to be as close as possible to authentic method of manufacturing. But thanks for sharing it with me, much appreciated. You guys are great bunch.