A Very Custom Leather and Wood Case for Coffee Equipment
If you like coffee, and the process of making coffee, then you may appreciate the opportunity of being able to set up a brewing station in different places. In other words, the ability to take out your fancy coffee equipment and set up camp whether at a park or a winery or just in the backyard. You may argue that you could just make coffee at home, pour it into a thermos and be on your way, but I rather like the idea of being able to do this process when out on adventure.
When I first gathered all my coffee periphenelia that I use on a day to day basis, I quickly realized, there's quite a lot of stuff to cover. We have a kettle, a gas burner, a scale, a grinder, coffee beans, water bottle, pour over system and a cup or two to drink the coffee out of. None of those things can really be scaled back on, if you want to have a flexible system where you could make more if you want to.
So what would be the best way to make a secure, practical system to bring everything along with you? You can obviously make a regular bag in fabric, however that feels a bit flimsy. Wood is always good, but a little heavy when you build something on a larger scale (and that you want to be portable). I always look at leather as the in between when it comes to wood and fabric. It's dense and durable, yet a lot lighter than wood. It's malleable and you can bend it into different shapes, so you have a lot of flexibility in terms of design. Now, in terms of material, leather alone can certainly be used, but I was thinking that adding some wood on the sides of this case would be a great way to add some stability and it would form the basis of the structure.
Leather
There are different thicknesses of leather, and for this project we needed a rather large and thick piece. Thicker leather obviously adds more weight, however it's also a lot less heavy than wood. The piece we're using is veg tanned, and doesn't have any added color to start. I was thinking that we're going to be using oak for the sides, so it would be neat to have some contrast in terms of color. To achieve this we ended up first applying one coat of water based dye, and then another one in a slightly different shade.
Wood
For the sides, we're adding some pieces that the leather will attach to. The wood in question is rough sawn white oak which was milled up, and then cut up into two equal pieces on the CNC. The sides are oval, but not quite even in terms of geometry, but designed for the leather to attach to. As always, I used Aspire by Vectric for software to design the pieces on, and my Avid CNC machine to cut the pieces on.
Construction
In many ways, this is an appealing project because the construction itself is quite simple in its genius sort of way. The one large piece of leather is attached on the sides to the wood which allows the leather to wrap around and be secured to itself with straps.
To secure the leather to the wood, we're drilling through the leather and the wood and putting in brass screws. Once the first piece is attached, it's repeated with the second piece, holding it in place with tape and also clamps while securing in place.
To add a little more structure to this whole case, we're also adding a piece of oak to the inside of the bottom flap where the two pieces will connect. This will give it more rigidity while also providing a space that a handle can be attached to.
To be able to close the case, we're adding straps connected to the leather which will attach to the other side with buckles. There will also be straps on the sides of the wood so you have a way to carry the case.
Now, once the basic case was created, we had a skeleton of sorts. But, we still needed a way to secure all the different coffee equipment inside it. You wouldn't want everything to be falling all over and scratching up the surfaces. So, to create an internal system we ended up using a thinner piece of leather, elastic straps and also added some dividers made with hardstock covered in leather, secured with glue. This whole system was glued into the bottom of the bag.
For hardware, we used some brass pieces that were secured to the bag with brass screws. We used a handles as well as buckles and it all contrasted nicely with the dark leather and oak.
Here are most of the coffee equipment pieces that fit inside the case:
Favorite coffee equipment (affiliate):
Watch the video of the project here!