Template for the lid canvas had to be altered. My roll of canvas has a slight stretch to it, and to be sure the finished product looked right, I had to reduce template dimensions to accomodate the stretch. I really can't tell yet if canvas stretch property is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. We'll find out when I go to fit canvas to the lid! Not the best moment for that discovery, so I could get all the hard work done, only to find I have wasted my time entirely. If that happens, I can enlarge the template back to 'no stretch' size and give the job to my local upholstery guys.
Discovered some very interesting facts about original canvas. Firstly, it wasn't colored until
after it was on the lid and the leather edge strip was in place. Although it was colored insitu, that occured
before the two timber blocks were screwed down. Also, the skirt around the edges, being double layered, folds back up and under the top layer BUT is not sewn anywhere except the corners. Instead, it is the tacks along the leather stip do that job. Original canvas is a very coarse weave that would have made waterproofing difficult, and because of all the perforations from fitting, I suspect the waterproofing may have occured with application of the color.
Around the edge of the lid, a leather strip was fastened with a large amount of upholstery cut tacks. They were approx 1" apart, with some put along the canvas berore leather was put in place. Guess this was to hold canvas securely prior to tacking the leather strip. There were 2 sizes of cut tacks used. Some are 3/8", some are just over 3/4". There is no pattern to which were used where, as far as I could tell. Long ones weren't used in corners, nor were they spaced along the sides amongst the short ones, with any discernible order. For replacement, I have ordered the larger size only, because I'm intending to use the original holes. Also ordered a propper tack hammer for the task. The new leather strip is vegetable tanned, as the original would have been, and should arrive sometime this week.
Instead of going on with canvas work last night, I put some time into reproducing the markings on the box. Not as straight forward as I had hoped. Some characters in one font looked correct, some didn't. Other characters from another font looked right, others were wrong. In short, I used characters of 4 different fonts to make one set of markings. Even the '&' symbol had to be searched for. Most military style stencils I have on file, do not have that symbol, so getting something passable became the goal. I think the finished product will look reasonably presentable, although not identical to the original. When you consider the box (and significant pieces of the gun itself) has been completely remade with non genuine color, canvas, leather strap, and metal components that are not painted, etc., the difference in stencil characters really isn't a huge concern!