A cased Senior with a bit of a story.

[Leonardj]

It started well over twenty years ago when I rescued a solidly built, wooden instrument case from being scrapped. It was pretty dirty though, covered with what I could only guess to be thirty to forty years worth of accumulated black grunge. On the inside, the light brown felt lining was worn, and discoloured from decades of use - but - underneath that lining, the wood was quite clean. It was set aside as a project to strip and refinish someday.

Just recently, as I was doing some much needed cleaning up of the clutter in the basement, I spotted the box on the shelf where it had sat dormant for the past decades. I decided that it was finally time to do something creative with that box. I wish now that I had taken a pic or two of how ugly the box looked before I began to clean it up, but I didn’t really expect that the clean up process would turn out so well. I thought that I would try a product that I have used in the past to clean up other wood items. The product is called “Orange Glow”. It is a wood cleaner/conditioner, and it has worked minor miracles for me in the past, and as can be seen, it did not disappoint this time either. Using super fine steel wool, and the Orange Glow, the original finish was soon shining through so nicely, that I decided to just leave that original finish as is, and age appropriate for the intended repurposing of the box.



Once the outside of the box was cleaned up, the inside was gutted of the old liner and the few small wood blocks that were used to support the instrumentation that the box originally held. The hardware was then removed to better facilitate cleaning the hinges and latches. After re-assembly, the box was ready to begin it’s transformation from an instrument case, to a pistol case. The new support structures and dividers were glued into place, and then the process of applying the new, green felt liner began. Once both sections of the box were finished, the final touch was added - a reproduction Webley box label, courtesy of Troubledshooter.

I am very pleased with the way that the case turned out. The compartment that the pellet tin is sitting in will also hold one of the pre-war round tins, if I should decide to place a pre-war gun in the case, but for now, it will be home to this pristine Senior, sporting a beautiful set of custom walnut grips fabricated by a local gunsmith.

[nige346]

looks superb, very nice job

[greasemonkey]

what a lovely set,well done..

[45flint]

Very nice, the Webley deserved a case.

[ccdjg]

Very smart piece of work Len. I particularly like the way that you have preserved just the right sort of ageing on the wood.

John

[Garvin]

Beautiful work, Len! The Webley Senior is such a high quality pistol that a similarly high grade case seems only fitting. When I was a youngster I put my Webley Tempest in a felt-lined mahogany box, but with hindsight a pistol with an alloy frame and plastic panels is incongruous.

[Troubledshooter]

Very nice job, Len.

[micky2]

A very nice case, well done.