Doctors case restoration

I have been asked to restore a case belonging to a third generation Doctor.

This can be a very difficult thing to undertake as it is difficult to tell how bad a case is from pictures.

As you can see the area around the lock has some water marks on it, it was clearly wet for some time. One of leathers properties is it can be wet molded and it will retain the shape when it dries.

This is the first case I have seen with a thicker leather band around the edges to help the case maitain its shape, unfortunately this had also been soaked and alloed to dry in a new shape which it maintained when it dried out.

https://flic.kr/p/2kbEBbF

As you can see some of the edges have some pretty serious wear, I am not sure that this is repairable. This piece of leather hanging off is part of the front panel that overlaps and wraps around the edge and is stitched to the front panel.

This is the inside of the front panel with the lock mechanism in place, The lock had worn thorough the inner lining in places. You can see the water marks and some of the issues with the shape.

The way to resolve this is to add a lining board to the inside of the front and rear panels.

Here is the board in place.

After adding the board I found a piece of leather in my stash I inherited from the estate of a book binder it is very thin skin from the 1970's and is very close to the colour. it will serve to protect the lining from the inside of the lock.

The board has pulled the front and rear panels back into shape, I have fed the leather to make it more supple but have not tried to clean or alter the watermarks as they tell the story of the case.

As you can see from these pictures the edges of the internal dividers had also suffered from water damage, and had started to delaminate. The repair method is to pull them gently apart and soak the laminations in PVA and then clamp them back together. It takes a long time but is the only way I have found to put them back together.

Of course I could have ordered new leather paper and board and made new ones. But that would not be restoration.

The laminations have now been repaired, These dividers actually provide the support that allows the case to stand on its own.

The second picture shows the top of the dividers and they have had similar treatment, but as they are visible I have folded a strip of leather over the edge to bind it.

The next step was to fit the dividers back into the gusset piece. They are stitched on both sides and along the bottom.

As you can see above the repaired dividers allow the case to stand independantly.

The case has some detail stitching on the front and rear panels, I had to remove the stitching to remove the internal lining, and of course it was machine stitching which would not have matched the hand stitching.

Here you can see the two lines of stitching the outer one holds the front panel in place.

Now the front and rear panels are in place and fully stitched I need to think about reattaching the top which contains the metal frame wrapped in leather.

Finally the finished Doctors case this case has served three generations of Doctors in the same family. Now it has been fully restored it is ready to serve the next three generations.