The following is from a discussion forum posting by Paul Gavin; sincere thanks to Paul for allowing us to post his words and photos here.
Inspired by some posts on TZUK I got it into my head that I needed a suitable watch storage case. I started with 3 small aluminium cases bought off ebay that carried 12 watches each but then I found a really cool bigger case so as one does, I replaced the 3 smaller ones with one big one. So here is a quick guide to making a watch storage case.
Find a case. This one is 34cm x 62cm x 10cm deep (all outside dimensions)
Measure the inside and buy polyethylene foam. The base of this case is 50mm deep so I bought 20mm and 30mm thick pieces. The thicker the foam the harder it is to cut. I find 30mm is the maximum. The top of this case came with foam.
The tricky bit is the layout of the watch holders. I made a jig out of mat board with a cut out of 21mm x 80mm for each watch separated by a 34mm gap on the horizontal plane and 21mm vertical gap. There is a 20mm boarder all round the outside. The gap between the watches (34mm) is important to maintain separation especially with large watches with crowns and pushers on both sides but this is the variable when setting out.
I pinned the jig to the foam and started the laborious job of cutting out the watch holders using a hobby knife with a new, deep blade for the long cuts and a shallow blade for the short cuts.
As the jig is smaller than the foam I moved it along but only after finishing all the cuts first.
The cut outs for the watch holders are 21 x 80mm from 30mm deep foam. I trim this down to 21 x 75 x 16mm to allow for the bracelet or strap. This is variable depending on your wrist size (in the case of bracelets). Fit the foam to the case and the watches to the holders – job done. The only thing missing is the chain and wrist cuff but that would give the game away.
Here is an example of the smaller case
regards
Paul