Hi Guys,
Today's treat is a most beautiful case which has just been restored. A soon as it arrived I was excited as it had huge potential. After a phenomenal amount of hours I have to say I am so proud of the finished article. It literally hurt when I had to take it to the post office today to ship back to it's owner.
Here are some before pictures (you will see it was bent up a little and also had some dents!
The inside was badly rotten under the fabric and rust had worked it's way into the fabric too.
Oops .... someone had played football or dropped it !
The fabric inside was pretty badly damaged so was removed in order to clean the insides of the case, replate the internals and remove the blade holder to restore it. Whilst the logo section had to be retained, it needed to be totally stripped from it's backing in order to clean the fabric and logo with cotton buds! I then remounted the logo on new backing material with new padding.
The remainder of the fabric was replaced with my newly discovered source ! Here is the back of the logo ..
Here's a few pictures that I'm sure you wouldn't have seen before ... When I receive items I usually put them under a
microscope to properly check how deep pitting is, what base metals are etc, here is the lid of the case :
Here is the hinge (ooooch !)
Ever wondered what pitting does to a surface ? Well here is the top of the blade bank close up :
So .... now for the reveal !!
Here it is :
In case you're wondering how the fine detailing is maintained on the lid - it's because I never leave old plating in place - it is always stripped to bare metal - or else the edges would end up "smoothed" and it would be obvious it had been replated.
The purple velvet looks like a fab match ! All of the structure beneath this was replaced too.
Hopefully you can now see why it hurt so much to have to return the case to it's proud owner ! It is the most gorgeous case and I know it will rightly take pride of place in the owner's collection.
I've now bought my own set with a case so that I can restore yet another - but this time I will get to keep it !!
Thankyou to the owner for kindly allowing me to show the pictures - it is greatly appreciated as I know other forum members were keen to see the finished article. When so much work is put into something to restore it, most people wouldn't realise what happens behind the scenes ! My job is to hide all the evidence that it was even restored .... so sometimes it's fun to do a spoiler !
Have a fab day !
Jay