New tool chest for the sea 7, lid stay or dust seal?

I had installed a newly purchased lid stay on the chest. At first I thought that it was cool. then after looking a bit at it I found that it looked cheap and out of place. It worked as it should, but there was something about the fake too shiny brass surface that was bugging me. I knew the stay was made out of some plated iron, but I had decided to install it because I figured that it would be a novel thing compared to my usual leather strap or chain.

After considering the case for a few days, I had been able to pinpoint 3 things that I disliked about the lid stays: 

The appearance or colour just didn't look good to me.

The way it folded into the chest would interfere with the planned tills.

I wasn't able to fit an interior dust seal.

Now that I had found enough reasons to not like the lid stays, it was so much easier to convince myself that I should dismount it and instead add an interior dust seal.

The dust seal is just screwed in place, because I wanted to make sure that I could adjust it if the lid should start to bind when wood movement sets in.

In an attempt to make the tool chest really sturdy, I have fabricated some corner reinforcements out of galvanized steel plate. It is 0.75 mm thick or approx. 1/32".

The idea is to screw these reinforcements on all corners of the chest once it is painted. Hopefully it will make it harder for the luggage handlers to break it.

The reinforcements are pretty easy to make, I would have liked to make them out of brass or zinc. We do have some brass on board, but it is too thin, and we don't have zinc. So there really wasn't much of a choice. 

Such thin plate is easily cut using some metal scissors. We only had some straight ones, so I nibbled away the curved part and finished it with a file.

I tried to soft solder some of the pieces, but I had to give it up because we didn't have solder flux (grease) We also didn't have any hydro chloride acid that I could have used for making a flux with. I tried using sulphuric acid, but it didn't work. Maybe I'll try to solder them again when I get home.

After making the 12 reinforcements I marked their outline one by one and chiseled out a recess so they would be as close to flush with the surrounding wood as I could get them.

My plan was to paint the chest before attaching the corner brackets, that way I wouldn't have to worry about getting paint on the metal.
A trip to the paint locker today revealed that we didn't have any green paint after all. So I have postponed the paint job until I get home. That way I can also get a chance of trying out my milk paint.

The lid stay (left side)

Chest with reinforcement corners temporarily mounted.

Interior dust seal and recess' for corners.