this is as far as I need to go at present with the outside of the case, though will treat the leather at the end of the project. The two mats you will see regularly between the case and the table top are just there to stop the corners leaving marks.
From the initial placement of the gun it became apparent that the fore end cannot be stowed separately it will need to be fitted in its correct place on a barrel. Further thoughts on the fore end I decided that it must be able to be fitted on either barrel in the case. Well it did not make sense if you had to remove a perfectly clean barrel to stow the fore end when that barrel may not have been the one being used at the time. Given this requirement the case barrel partitions will have to be constructed accordingly, another requirement is a personal choice of mine that every gun case should store a set of cleaning rods and its fittings plus a pair of snap caps. What space there is in the case is now rapidly being taken up causing closer and closer fitting of the gun in the case.
With the decision made regarding the case layout a start can be made making the wood dividers and inner case wall, to simplify things both the dividers and wall will be made from the same size wood stock with just a rounded top rather than the usual chamfer with a reduced thickness of 6mm (1/ 4”). The timber used in the UK for traditional box cases is “White Deal” this is more often than not Spruce possessing good qualities for case work being light and strong can be purchased clear of knots and readily available, though far from the quality of Oak but lower in cost and a lot lighter.
I am using a standard wood size that is readily available which is 6mm X 7cm X 3Meters (1/4” X 2ľ” X 10’) two lengths were sufficient to complete the whole project at not a lot of money, added to this cost was one meter of Baize 39” X 47” leaving a considerable amount over.
Just a simple profile with no hard work needed looks fine. Rounding off the top of the wood was done by hand using an abrasive paper and eye only. because when covered by the Baize you are unable to detect any imperfections in your efforts.
Case inner sides all cut to length.
Inner sides fitted with no problems until you tried to close the case top, things became a little tight would be an understatement, this would make closing the lid when covered with Baize impossible. This in part was caused by the case being out of square between the case top and bottom also the differing thicknesses of the tops leather.
The cure was to move the inner sides towards the centre by a milometer using a hard card packing piece fixed in place with PVA Adhesive. This is the black section you can see in the photograph, the card used was photograph Matt card which is extremely strong stable and strong as the wood itself.
Looking just above were the planted on card finishes you will see a pencil line this marks the inside depth of the case, this is very important when it comes to fitting the Baize later.
