DIY Wooden Travel Shaving Kit

I wanted to make a travel shaving kit for my straight razors like this after seeing one on a local marketplace app. So I made one myself with some DIY resawn (SP?) wood. However, I had to crawl before I walked so let's take it step by step (which is the whole point of these Instructables so I apologize for stating the obvious).

Wood and cardboard

Mirror

Box hardware, like hinges, accents, and clasps

Wood glue

Epoxy

Various power tools / Hand tools

Marking tools

Blades

Straight edge

Finishing oil/Stain

Clamps

Sanding/filing items

I wanted to ensure that when the time came, I would be able to jump right into the main event without incident. Therefore, I made myself a shave box out of cardboard. This gave the me big picture details I needed prior to cutting real wood.

The box consists of three parts:

1. The bottom housing to hold your gear. (Take it easy, Bad Santa fans...)
2. The part of the lid to clasp and hold the mirror, and
3. The part of the lid that hinges to the main body.

Having the concept down, it was time to get to work...sort of. Well, I used some scrap pallet wood to get the cuts down.

Here is a beginning to end video of my process, mindset, problem solving, and of course, shenanigans.

I needed my pieces of wood to make the common wood working box: top bottom sides. Wooo! So not mind blowing but I put my table saw, jointer, and miter saw to work to get the pieces I required (pics 1 - 9)

I wanted the lid to sit tightly inside the top so I measured out the length of the long sides and subtracted the width of the short sides (Pics 10 - 11). The math turned out to be 231 - 15 = 216 millimeters (pic 12).

With that out of the way, I set up some painters tape on my table saw (pics 15 - 16) to act as visual warnings to stop my cuts to insert the bottom. Too many times have I taken the kerf cut of the blade the full length of the side pieces only to show the exposed cut and further show my amateur wood working skills. But no more, this one was concealed!! Yes, victory (pic 17).

That being said it was time to work on cutting out the 1/8-inch thick insert for the bottom. I wanted this to slide into place and cut the piece to length with a razor blade since it was so thin. And then...disaster struck <sigh> revealing my novice hubris.

Pic 21 shows that I didn't take into account the depth of the cut in the side pieces when making my width cut (pic 19), thus revealing light behind the far side. Pic 22 shows my second attempt which was corrected for insertion. Don't make mistakes like I did.

Now I had all I needed for the basics of the travel kit aka a box. It is time to take this to the hard wood for the final build.

Several months ago I took a fell branch to the resaw fence on my bandsaw and left them to dry. I will now utilize them in this build and so I repeated the step to get the box. Pic 2 and 3 show the glued box taken to the table saw to re-open it back into two separate pieces. However, you will notice that in pic 2 I already cut the top in half prior to glue up!

This is to "remind" myself where to make the cut for the hinged mirror later. After some planing (pics 4 & 5), I got to work on some recesses for the hardware. I drilled holes and chiseled out a recess for the main hinge and placed the front clasp on as well. Using some scrap copper pipe, I flattened and textured the piece and used a stamping machine to place my logo text for the front.

The next thing to do was remove the lid piece to carry the mirror and the final pic reiterates the overall concept for shaving. I do want to mention that a catch will be glued behind where the clasp is located and I wanted to get the angle just right so that is wasn't too low or too high. Granted, you don't have a lot of room for mistakes but you get the idea.

I bought a mirror from the dollar store and got to work with a glass cutter, scoring the edge I needed for the lid. After several attempts in getting a clean cut I finally got the piece I needed.

I got perplexed for a few moments trying to figure out how to edge the mirror. I could use the "live edge" cut offs from earlier (seen on the far left of pic 2) but wound up planing a 3rd piece of wood to house the mirror. I drilled some relief holes and got to work removing the inside with my scroll saw (Pics 3-5). After some filing and sanding to a smooth border, I figured this was a good point to put some layers of finish before the final glue up (Pics 7 - 8).

NOTE: I really fought myself on NOT doing Yakisugi or Shou Sugi Ban for the outside because I love the way it looks. I even did several test pieces but talked myself out of it...hmm oh well.

Some 2 part epoxy made an overnight job for securing the mirror on the Short piece of the lid followed by the next day wood gluing (pics 9 - 16).

[Another] NOTE: you may notice that my final mirror looks "dirty." I chose to try and DIY antique the mirror piece, I got overambitious, and in hindsight, would not do that if I made a second one unless I did so with minor "aging" in the corners/edges only.

After all the glue dried, I put the hardware back on. The last thing to do was to glue the catch for the mirror (pic 9).

There was a little bit of shaving necessary for the bottom of the mirror (where the catch mates) to recess back in the lower part of the lid that has the hinge. Not a big deal since the sharp chisel made quick work of it and it fell back into place properly.

And that is that, I now have my own travel straight razor shaving kit and I didn't have to spend >$150 on it! The overall dimensions came out to be 3 X 3.5 X 8.75-inches. This is enough to hold a razor, my brush, and copper dish to hold the lather. Good enough for me! I chose to have the entire bottom section all one section. The ad I saw for the sale piece had another two slots to hold something and I thought, based on the dimensions, what would they even do? What would they hold and what are their functions? If you know, let me know.

Let me know what you think and if you plan on making one of your own, I would love to see it.