How to Restore a No. 9 Box in Tatty Condition

Hi from Howard (the restorer!),

I restored a no. 9 box from a very sorry state to mint looking (not the interior trays, they weren't bad so I left them though some discolouring. I copied Greg Rahn's methods (see a no. 9x restoration on the New Zealand website which is nearly identical in method to what I did).

The box was in such a sorry state (with no decent lid) that it was given to me for free!

The lid

I had to reconstruct a lid from scratch. I got a large sheet of yellow card from Hobbycraft. cut to size, precreased, folded, bound with bookbinders tape and then covered with Wibalin paper (you can use Charisma paper too from Ratchfords.co.uk as its nearly the same and has a few shades of red and they sell it by the sheet which is great!).

The box

I had to remove the cardboard around the box with red paper as it was in a very sorry state. It mostly fell off. Then sand the wood underneath with progressively lighter sandpaper. Then cut some cardboard (a plain sheet this time) to size and glue it overnight with woodglue. I used a lot of my wife's pegs (don't tell her) to hold it in place whilst the glue dried and/or a few heavy books. Then covered the box with wibalin red paper up to the top edge. Inside the lift out tray was pretty good though with quite a few marks but I left that as it was!

The label

This was a problem as the scan I did from the original wasn't very good. I spent many hours cleaning it all up. I then had to find a font to redo the label text which I did.

Hey presto, a useable no. 9 box.

Pictures below of the finished article. I didn't photograph the stages in construction because Greg Rahn has already done this beautifully on his section of the New Zealand website!