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Raymond Reynolds uses some wonderful compressed card fibre internal packaging for shipping their bottles. Mrs. B is a keen gardener and has found that the packaging makes ideal seed trays, with each seedling having its own space to grow yet when planted out into the soil the card quickly decomposes and allows the seedling's roots to spread out.

From this:

To this:

I have also made the occasional storage box from a wooden case. Cases of 6 bottles (of some brands) are exactly A4 sized so ideal for storing documents, sheet music etc. In our house cases of 12 tend to store CDs, camera equipment, Christmas decorations or any other junk I can use as an excuse to make something.

The picture below is of a Fonseca 1966 case. It was sanded down to remove all the scuffs, scrapes and black ink markings that occur during shipping and storage, given a coat of slightly tinted varnish, put onto brass casters, brass hinges, brass clasp, brass chains to prevent it opening too far were added and a couple of brass fixing plates used to stop the two pieces of tongue and groove making up the lid from separating.

Of course, if you plan to do this to a box you have to remove the lid, very very carefully to stop the wood from splitting apart - but it's worth it as the boxes do look very good scattered around the house.

Alex Bridgeman wrote:The picture below is of a Fonseca 1966 case.

F66box_small.jpg

That's really nicely done.

The port was pretty remarkable too...

Beautifully done.