Harry Potter Suitcase

When your girl is a Harry potter fan and you are a woodworker, you can only expect that this question pops up: can you build this for me?

First we planned to make a Hogwarts trunk, just like the one in the movies.

But when it was finished we transformed the trunk into a display cabinet for her collection of funko pop's.

This is the first time I made an instructable, so I hope you can follow :D

Materials

• Scrap wood from pallets
• Glue
• Leather
• Hinges
• Locks
• Plexiglas
• Paint (wood coller/gold)

Tools i used

• Planer
• Beltsander
• clamps
• Saw
• Nail gun

After I dismantled the pallets and removed the nails.

Ran the wood through the planner.

Put some Lammelo’s in the planks (boards) for strength and glued them together.

To make the "round" corners, I made 22.5 deg chamfers at the plank (board) sides.

These planks were glued together to get the desired form, using to tape to keep them in position.

After a day of drying I test fitted everything.

Added the side panels with a nail gun and some glue.

Next step was much "fun": sanding, lots and lots of sanding (yhay). Not only to get the planks flush, but also to round the edges.

Using a belt sander made the job much easier.

After 2 trips to the store it's time to paint (at first I had a paint that was to dark)

A dark wood paint makes the trunk used and vintage.

Also painting the inside of the trunk made it too dark and boring. To make the trunk outstanding, I printed out the Daily prophet, known from the Harry Potter movies and glued the news paper on the inside.

I used wood glue but that caused bubbles in the paper. Next time I would use mod podge.

Added the initials on the side of the suitecase.

Printed it and used it as a guide on painters tape when I cut out the letters.

On the top side I added a golden sticker of Hogwarts (not that good with paint) and no picture :D

Went to my shoe repairman for two leather hand crafted belts and a handgrip (handgrip not on the photo)

Nailed them on using gold nails

Like I said in the beginning the first idea was just to make a trunk. But that had limited use, so we turned it into a display cabinet, by adding wooden shelves in the trunk, positioned on small black shelf carriers

First i added a LED strip on the side (but that was too bright). I repositioned the strips below each shelf; which was much nicer.

Last thing was a big plexi in front of it all so the dust stays out the case.

And finally a kiss from my girl friend as reward.