Big blue razor chest

[Ecl]

When I was working on the cabinetry part of building my new house, I asked the cabinet guy if he could build a chest for my razors. I gave him a crudely-drawn picture of roughly what I wanted (lots of wide, thin drawers, space for paddle strops, lockable doors) and he brought back a professional cabinet design that was not entirely unlike what I wanted. At a price of $7,000. So, I canceled that and moved in with what I had: a bunch of jewelry display boxes on a wire-frame shelf unit. Not a great solution, but it didn’t cost me anything. The downside was the daily juggling act with the boxes. I’d noticed that I was mainly using the ones in the top two boxes just so I could avoid all the un-stacking and re-stacking.



I kept looking for something that would do the job at a much lower price, and found what I needed at Home Depot for under $300, plus another $120 or so at a shelving place to make a cart.



Each of the drawers in my new chest holds 3 standard jeweler’s 10-slot inserts (no modification needed, it’s as though this thing was designed to hold these) for a theoretical maximum of 180 razors. I swapped in two 7-slot inserts to hold kamisoris and DE razors, so I’ll have to live with a max of 174. Should still take me longer than my probable lifespan to fill it.

The top part holds paddle strops, desiccant cartridge and a lot of other stuff. The whole chest locks, something which featured prominently on my original wishlist.

I still have this fantasy that I’ll eventually develop some cabinet-making skills and build the thing I originally wanted, but until that happens I don’t have to play Towers of Hanoi with jewelry boxes to find a particular razor.