Sword Case

A friend asked me to make him a sword case to house his great, great, great grandfathers dress sword. What I thought would be a simple job caused me a few headaches. The cause was a lack of veneer long enough for the outside of the sides. I had plenty of black walnut veneer but none of it would do the job. So I decide to put the grain horizontal. This meant I had to do around 5 joints to get pieces long enough for the sides.

The next issue was gluing the veneer down. I don’t have a vacuum bag but fortunately a long flat bench top which I used to press the veneer down onto, with all my clamps! I used yellow glue, but suppose I could have used hide glue and veneer hammered it down. Fortunately the back veneer was long enough but it still needed a long joint to get the book matched back panel that I wanted.

The last issue was planning the sides to width – with all that veneer end grain I had to go carefully to prevent it splintering out. Bits that did I patched up with super glue – isn’t it wonderful!!!

The door had a light wood string around the inside to match the maple back board. It was over a meter long and quite flexible, so I decided it would be prudent to use acrylic instead of glass.

Interestingly the static caused by the acrylic tended to ‘suck’ the tassels on the sword to it!!! Suppose I need an antistatic cloth to polish it with!

Thanks for looking.

-- Madburg WA