Fitting out gun cases - the Fench style

[ccdjg]

Matt (ptdunk) and myself have been pooling our experiences on fitting out cases for our favourite airguns, and while he has been looking at the “English style” of fitting, where the interior is made of separate partitions to receive the gun and its accessories, I have been experimenting with the “French style”, where the gun and its accessories fit snugly in cut-out sections of a soft base. Although it is up to individual taste, the French-style does lend itself more to modern style pistols, and the ‘English’ partition fitting seems more appropriate to antique and vintage guns.

Matt has now produced a great video showing his approach to case making and English-style interior fitting ( https://youtu.be/x6jaDAP5Yus ). Here are a couple of stills from his video as a taster.







I thought it would also be useful to put up something about the alternative French-style fitting, and give you my experiences with this. Here are a couple of examples that I did:



.


There are many ways you can tackle this style. One excellent method has been detailed by Jimmie Dee here (https://www.jimmiedeesairguns.com/gu...ir-pistol-box/) , which uses rigid foam (Plastazote LD18) . However, I was interested in the more traditional soft fabric effect shown above, where the main problem is getting a smooth, wrinkle-free finish. The following method I came up with uses fabric over flexible foam rubber, and is relatively simple, requiring no special skills or equipment to get a neat finish with no wrinkles. One advantage is that it involves only a minimal use of glue, so it is not messy and there is no waiting around while glue dries. Also any mistakes are easily reversed.


This is a summary of the technique:

You first need the following:

1. An appropriate box. This is your choice, but if you want traditional wood then fleabay is great for finding old empty mahogany, walnut or oak finish cutlery boxes at very reasonable prices.
2. A piece of foam rubber (or any other type of padding material), big enough to fit the box base, with a thickness roughly half of the gun’s cross-section. (You can of course use layers glued together if what you have available is too thin).
3. A piece of the desired fabric (loads of different colours and textures available on fleabay).
4. Three sheets of moderately stiff carboard, each slightly larger than the box interior.
5. Some thin cardboard, about postcard thickness, for cutting into strips.
6. A roll of strong double-sided sticky tape, about 1 inch wide.
7. A general purpose glue.



The first stage is to line the lid and base with the fabric. The following picture sequence shows the steps involved.





Cut a piece of the card to be a good (but not too tight) fit in the lid, and put double sided tape all around the edge as in pic. (1). On a flat surface stretch the fabric, good side down, using weights to hold it wrinkle-free, as in (2), and then press the taped card, sticky-side down onto the fabric, as in (3). Trim the fabric leaving about an inch excess all round. Apply double-sided tape all around the underside edge of the card and then turn the excess fabric over the card, as shown in pic. (4), and stick it down to give clean edges and tidy corners, as in (5). Apply glue to the back of the card and press it down in the lid to fix it permanently in place, and the result should look something like (6), with no wrinkles or creases.
Next the whole process is repeated again with a fresh piece of card, and the base of the box is lined in the same way.



In the next step, a fabric edging is applied is applied around the inside edge of the box base. This stage can be omitted if desired, but it does give a more professional look, and can help hide any imperfections in the wood. The procedure is summarised in the following picture sequence.




The edging strip is made by using the double-sided tape to stick a strip of very thin card, cut to the same width as the depth of the box, on to the fabric, as in Pic. 1 . Ideally a single length of fabric should be used sufficient to go all the way round the inside of the box. If there is not enough fabric to do this then you can make it up from shorter pieces, but try to ensure that any resultant joins will coincide with the corners of the box, otherwise they will be conspicuous. Once the card strip has been stuck down, apply another layer of the double-sided tape to the card and carefully fold the fabric over to stick it down, so giving a double layer of fabric, as in Pic. 2.. Excess fabric is then trimmed off to give the edging strip, as in Pic. 3. Check that the strip comes up exactly to the box edge top when in place and trim it before applying it if necessary. To fix the strip into the box base, tackle one edge at a time and apply double-sided tape to each inside edge, making sure it goes right up to the top of the edge. Stick the edging strip to this carefully, pushing it well into the corners to avoid any gaps or wrinkles, as in Pic. 4. The final result will look like Pic.5.



Next you need to make the cut-out insert that will house the box contents. The steps are summarised in the next picture sequence.





First draw out the pistol, and any other cut-out shapes needed for accessories, onto a piece of card (Pic. 1), which has previously been cut to be to be an easy fit in the box base. When drawing the cut-out for the gun, it should be a little larger than the gun outline, so that the gun will not be a tight fit in the final fabric-lined recess. Also avoid making the outline too detailed, as this will make it difficult to avoid creases and wrinkles. When making the outline for the barrel recess, this should not be any narrower than twice the depth of the recess, to ensure that when the fabric is cut and pushed into the recess it will extend to the full depth and not leave any of foam rubber exposed.
The outlines on the card are then cut out using a Stanley knife, and the card template is stuck firmly to a slightly larger piece of the foam rubber, or other padding material, using plenty of the double sided tape. Using the card cut-outs as template, cut away all the excess foam rubber, giving the resultant laminate shown in Picture 2.
Note: Although cutting foam rubber can be done with a sharp knife or scissors, this can be tricky with awkward shapes and tight corners. A useful tip is to use a kitchen electric knife, as with one of these you can get perfect cuts in the most complicated of shapes very easily. However, if you don’t have access to an electric knife, don’t worry, as any rough edges will eventually be covered with fabric.






The next stage is to cover the cut-out foam rubber with the fabric. Apply double-sided tape all around the card perimeter and around the edges of the cut-out holes. Stretch out another piece of the fabric, good side down, on a flat surface and stick the card down firmly onto it, ensuring no wrinkles. Trim the fabric to leave about a 2 inch excess around the perimeter of the card and then turn it over and stick it down on the underside of the foam with more tape. This will give you a nice flat fabric surface covering all the cut-out sections. Where the fabric is stretched across the holes, cut into it with a Stanley knife and make flaps in appropriate places so that the flaps can be folded into the recesses and tucked underneath the card, where they can be stuck down on the underside with more tape, or glue. This can be a bit fiddly if gaps and large creases are to be avoided, but remember that any defects will be hidden when the gun and accessories are in place. Large gaps, if any, can be patched with pieces of fabric cut to shape and glued in place. The result should be a neat, wrinkle-free fabric-covered insert, similar to that shown in Pic. 3. Finally, when you are happy with the result, the insert is pushed into the box base and permanently stuck in place, as in Pic. 4.



The inside lid can be left as it is, or it can be decorated with a suitable trade label, or it can be fitted with pockets. Pockets are useful for storing any paperwork or targets, and to make a neat pocket, a piece of fabric is stuck onto a rectangular piece of card with double-sided tape, and is folded over the edges and stuck down to give a neat edge finish. The covered card is then folded over along three edges to give a 1 cm strip of double thickness along three sides. These double-thickness edges are then glued to the back panel of the lid with thick glue to make the sides and bottom of the pocket. Weigh it down with a heavy book while the glues dries to give a nice flat result. Make sure none of the glue runs onto the fabric where it can be seen. The following pictures show the sort of result you can get with pockets.






Good luck if you decide to give it a go yourself. And remember, double-sided tape is the amateur’s best friend, as if the worst comes to the worst, you can always peel it off and start again.

[SRV1]

Thank you ccdjg. A quality job indeed and a first class presentation of the work involved. Very impressed.
Kind regards....

[45flint]

Casing can really make the display of a gun. Especially here where there are multiple barrels. Foam exacto knives and way too much time. French casing a Webley seems to be a stretch for a English forum. Lol




Another French I bought. Did make the label from a image on the net.

[Garvin]

Matt (ptdunk) and myself have been pooling our experiences on fitting out cases for our favourite airguns, and while he has been looking at the “English style” of fitting, where the interior is made of separate partitions to receive the gun and its accessories, I have been experimenting with the “French style”, where the gun and its accessories fit snugly in cut-out sections of a soft base. Although it is up to individual taste, the French-style does lend itself more to modern style pistols, and the ‘English’ partition fitting seems more appropriate to antique and vintage guns.

Great technique. Looks like you need a lot of patience but there's nothing worse than having a quality pistol unboxed and with no case.

[Troubledshooter]

Thank you for the very informative post, John.

[rapidresponse1]

now that does look good

[Craig-P]

Lovely work, really well done.

[Scorpio54]

Here is one box I made up from scratch (just made it up as i went along....) sold it a couple of years back and regretted it ever since.... not all bad though acquired another MK2 and made up another box to suit it looks quite good, but not as good as the 1st attempt.

https://ibb.co/NF9J6ms