Ten-minute cardboard tub

Give me the facts

Just the facts*

Fact (1)   I need some tubs and possibly buckets and barrels too. Lots and lots and lots of them. More than I can afford. Some are needed in the bedrooms (comfort stations) but the majority are essential for the yet to be finished kitchen and food storage areas. I can’t turn wood to hollow any out and working barrel stave by barrel stave on more than a few would be a very sticky business. It really needs some solid thinking about.

Fact (2)  I tend to hoard the really interesting envelopes that come our way at Christmas and birthdays. Some are hemp, some recycled; one I received was elephant dung!   They’ve been used as backing and as documents, books, scrolls and edge finishes and occasionally as supports and bases for items being worked. Of course I also hoard some of the ever useful cardboard envelopes that hold small books, photos and certificates.

Yesterday a very noisy brain clunk occurred as I finally added item (1) to item (2) and decided to play around with some bits of the envelope, both paper and cardboard varieties, to see if something vaguely usable, in a dark room with your eyes half closed, could be achieved.

Materials

• strip of card envelope
• strips of paper envelope
• pencil or fine marker
• suitably sized circular item to draw round
• wood scratch touch-up pen or similar
• glue
• brushes
• craft knife
• scissors
• ruler

Method

(first 7 steps in captions)

(click on an image to view gallery and see longer captions, and reach the link for larger image – below right in gallery)

#1 – One standard postal cardboard envelope

#2 – I cut a strip of the height I fancied for the outer walls of the tub. I noted that the inner edge of the envelope flap had a nice raised section and included this as the top rim for the strip.

#3 – I coloured the cut cardboard and made rough two circles for the bottom of the tub, sticking them together to give a thicker layered base. I also cut out narrow paper strips from envelopes and coloured them too.

#4 – You can see the envelope fold at the top edge of this strip which I’ve cut longer than the circumference of the circle. I then scored all along the length as false staves for the tub (ruler and craft knife if you’re more careful than I am when experimenting).

#5 – Here I was careful in bending the card strip at each score mark so that the whole thing would curl round the base of the tub.

#6 – Here comes the even bigger cheat – I placed the base on a piece of scrap envelope (did not glue it down) and squeezed glue all around it making a bed for the outer walls to sit on and hold the construction together for me.

#7 – I wrapped the walls of the tub round, cutting it at the butted join and closing it by sticking a small sliver of coloured paper strip down the inside and adding two bands of the same paper around the outside.

#8   I then coated the whole thing in and out with PVA.  Why the PVA?  Because it hopefully will strengthen the construction and will allow me to do …

#9   Before the PVA dried I re-painted the tub, finishing with a dry rough hog’s hair small bristle brush in a downward motion to give a wood-like finish to the cardboard and running round the paper bands with a soft bristle brush horizontally to finish off.

Conclusions

Well, the glue circle around the base squeezed itself between the sides and the bottom piece nicely and it’s certainly tub like and almost round.  It’s probably better than no tub.

When dry (or almost) it’s removable from the paper base (or you can be v careful and cut round it with a craft knife) and any paper that comes with it  can be trimmed and coloured up to match.  It probably will need a good coat of matt varnish or similar to harden it a little further(?)

The tub bands are too wide, particularly the top one of the two, and need a better finish I think, but overall it seems worthwhile to do it again until I get it right, I reckon.

*Dragnet links

and, before you yell at me, I know from what I’ve read that the title above probably can’t be attributed to Dragnet as no one really did use the phrase, but …

Dragnet 50’s radio show episodes
Dragnet 108 The Candy Store Robberies (TV episode)
Stan Freberg – St. George & The Dragonet, 1953 Capitol record