President Case Interior Restoration

[tnsplayer]

Last week I purchased a fabulous looking President from Drandall. The razor is in perfect shape but the interior of the case had worn velvet and some bleeding of the green dye. I decided to do a bit of restoration work to the interior over the weekend. The top insert was cleaned to remove most of the dye staining. Knowing this isn't a collectors piece and more for my own enjoyment, I completely removed the velvet lining on the bottom and replaced it. It turned out pretty good, I'm not 100% satisfied with the velvet in the spots where the head goes. It bunched up a bit. I think Gillette put the fabric on the metal before they cut it and formed the plate. Anyway for now it's good, I may decide to redo the velvet again someday as I have plenty of extra material. Has anyone done this before? Are there any suggestions on how to keep it from bunching?

First Picture is before (photo courtesy of Drandall, I forgot to take one before I started this project). Next two pictures are the after pics.

[Greyfox]

[drews50]

The top certainly came out well. Looks like you did a pretty nice job with the velvet too.

[Blue-EyedSon]

That looks great! Nice work!! How did you clean up the staining to the lining?

[ERVARGASNY]

Wow, you did a fantastic job, i cant believe my Eye, yes you hear Right, i have bandage over one Eye, ill say it again, i cant believe my Eye

[tnsplayer]

Thanks! I started out trying to use Tide, that didn't do much. So I tested out using bleach on the small piece that goes between the top and bottom. It worked great. Dissolved the dye without damaging the material. It still took a bit of courage to use bleach on the rest of the top but it worked well and didn't damage the Gillette silkscreen words.

That looks great! Nice work!! How did you clean up the staining to the lining?

[Jake]

Excellent job -- clever to use bleach like that. What dilution of bleach did you use? And did you actually apply the bleach on the area over the lettering?

[tnsplayer]

I don't recall the dilution of water to bleach but it was definitely pretty dilute. I tried to be very careful with getting the solution directly on the lettering but the material did soak up the solution and spread to where the letters were. I can't notice any negative reaction to the lettering from the bleach solution.

[IronHammer]

Very nice work! It looks fabulous compared to how it looked before. Heck, it looks fabulous compared to most President cases! LOL!

[akira7799]

Awesome job!

[alex2363]

looks new again, make sure you let it air out or it may turn yellow

[shavemeup]

Thanks for the information on the bleach. I wouldn't have thought of that. I thought my presidents case was a total loss . Worse green dye stains combined with bad rust stains. I took the case apart and cleaned the dye stains on the lid cloth with bleach as you did. The thin trim band on the top and bottom of the case I removed and soaked in bleach for quite some time. The deep dye stains put up a fight but did come out. The trim pieces also had really bad rust stains that the bleach wouldn't touch. I have a bathroom spray called "rust out". It is chemically similar to something like CLR but more dilute. I emptied about 6 oz. of that into a cup and soaked the trim for several hours. The rust stains dissolved and are gone now.The bottom tray also was rust stained so I soaked it. Not a total success but a lot of the rust stain is now gone. The product seems to work better when soaking something rather than just spraying it on and letting it sit. My case is now quite usable rather than something hidden in a drawer. I don't know what the long term effects will be on the cloth but I had considered the case worthless before, now I can use it. Thanks for the inspiration!