I bought a No. 45, but the cutters did not come with the boxes that were included at the original purchase, all those decades ago. Not wanting to spend a large amount of money for real boxes, I’ve opted to make my own reproductions. However, I wanted them to be as close to the original versions as possible.
The astute reader will note that the No. 45 cutter boxes had graphics on them displaying the contents of each box. These tend to get destroyed over time and are very rare to be intact on a vintage box. Since I’m fairly well versed in Photoshop, I figured that I could make my own reproduction graphics if I had sufficient starting material.
I started this thread to see if any fellow LJs could post dimensions for the boxes as well as images of the graphics, if they were intact. I was lucky that Gshepherd was kind enough to take some high-res scans of his boxes and email them over, giving me a great starting point (thanks, Gshepherd!). And also thank you Mosquito for posting overall dimensions, though if anyone is willing to take detailed dimensions of each box, I would appreciate that as well.
Anyway, the repro graphics have been uploaded to my Picasa account so that everyone can download them and use them as you will. They are 500ppi in resolution, and formatted as 8×10 images to print off easily with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer or Windows Image Preview (or your favorite Mac/Linux equivalents). I included three choices of background colors to suit the individual – black, grey, and as close to the Stanley green as I could get with the images I could find. If anyone has a better idea what the color actually is, please shoot me a PM.
If you appreciate these, please consider that it took me about 8 hours total to reproduce the graphics. I ask nothing in return except your honest feedback. Also, I was only able to procure images for the Sweetheart versions of these boxes. If anyone has boxes from other vintages that they would like to see reproduced, send a good high-res scan/picture my way with label dimensions, and I’ll do my best to get it done.
To download the pictures, please click on them to be redirected to the Picasa link.
-- -=Pride is not a sin=-
6 comments so far
Mosquito
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2767 posts in 460 days
#1 posted 224 days ago
Again, great work. I’d take good pictures of mine, but they’re not in that great of shape…
I could take some better dimensions using my digital calipers, but they don’t quite go wide enough to get the full width. I can work on getting the rest, though.
One thing I found interesting, though, is that it looks like my boxes were made from a single piece for front, bottom, and back, with 2 pieces on the ends. It looks like a really deep groove cut into a solid piece.
-- Mos - Twin Cities, MN -- Stanley #45 Evangelist - www.youtube.com/MosquitoMods
Smitty_Cabinetshop
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6385 posts in 786 days
#2 posted 224 days ago
Wow! Awesome! Thank you for posting!
I have two boxes of the #45 irons, but there’s no labels on them. There will be now! :-)
What a nice gesture to the LJ community you’ve made!
-- Don't anthropomorphize your handplanes. They hate it when you do that. -- OldTools Archive
lysdexic
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3433 posts in 791 days
#3 posted 224 days ago
Very cool of you.
-- I hate being bipolar. It's awesome! :^ ) ^:
Brandon
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3746 posts in 1119 days
#4 posted 223 days ago
Nice work! Thanks for posting this.
-- "hold fast to that which is good"
grfrazee
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217 posts in 308 days
#5 posted 223 days ago
Thanks for the comments.
@Mosquito – if you were able to get those detailed measurements, that would be great.
-- -=Pride is not a sin=-
Scott R. Turner
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181 posts in 1356 days
#6 posted 217 days ago
Very nice job reconstructing the graphics. I’ve done that once or twice and it’s not always easy!
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