Tutorial - Building a transport box for display models

posted by Roman, jarhead, Kong

Hi.

This one is a little article on how you can build up a box to carry your display miniatures safely without paying thousands of bucks. For sure there are other ways to transport them, this is just for your inspiration and there is no need to use exactly the same parts.

The MASSIVE VOODOO monkey gang is also preparing another better version of a transport box for the apes of the future. Guess you'll find out soon on this channel. Now back to topic.

Building a transport box for display models

I still know some folks around that don't really care about how they transport their miniatures. I can't get that, in fact it is a horrible imagination painting on a miniature for weeks and then throw it in a box with a towel or things much worse.

I had the idea of this box a while ago together with my friend Peter. As far as i can remember it has been a wonderful day, travelling through the city on bycicles and collecting everything we did need for this project:

- a wooden box
- Rest of wood
- PVC glue and an old brush
- some screws
- a grasp
- some shutters
-  a saw
- McGyver bravery

The both last parts and the wooden box have been bought in a do-it-yourself-store, but i guess the photos will explain this better.

What we did:

We build up everything from a wooden box we bought from small money in the do-it-yourself-store. There has been a cover already included in this box. For sure you can use a plastic box or metal box for this. The box itself looked like this when finished. Sorry at this point, i did forget to take a picture on how it looked like before we used the "McGyver-Experimental-Force" on it.

Let me explain what we did. First we glued some wooden rest pieces in place in the inner box area. It will be used as a channel for an additional wooden plate, which will provide moving it out and in. Using PVC glue for this as it is best for glueing wood to wood, done this with the old brush.

The wooden plate was fit to seize with a saw. The miniature is now fixed with Pattafix at the plate.

If you are brave enough to turn the plate upside down you may see that Pattafix also keeps a heavy based miniature in place. Please don't try this at home at your own risk as i am not sure which fixing material you use or how heavy your miniature is. I am not to blaim if something went wrong and makes 'chuk!', followed by tears.

The inner area of the box has been prepared with glue to bring on some foam for safer interior space. You may get this foam out of Wargaming Transport boxes or collect some miniature blisters on your Happy Painting path.

Now the McGyver Spirit was unleashed. We did bought a metal grasp in the do-it-yourself-store and pinned it on the upper side of the box with some screws and pure Jungle power.

Peter did glue some wooden rest on the bottom to use them as some kind of feet, i did not and i always have my bottom dirty... i mean the one from the box ;)

McGyver really forced us to create a brainless construction to close the cover for the moments you walk around with your box. We bought some cheap shutters in the do-it-yourself-store and after we did not really get how to fix them, we just did it the McGyver way, put some screws in, using wooden rests, etc. - i even used Superglue, haha. Here is the shutter, now still something to shut him in is missing, that is where i used the superglue...

Ok, for sure this is not the best way to do so. Please take this as inspiration. I guess some of you will find a better way to do this. I just can say it works, even after one year of using my box now i got one side destroyed, so i can only close it on one side, haha. Sometimes i use tape for the other side :)

After everything is done you can put your wooden plate into the notch and the miniatures will be ready for transport - the complete amount of money used for this box has been about 25,00 € as far as i can remember:

After my own box did a lot of travel with me over the last year it surely has changed in its look. Here is a picture of the actual box i am using, it is still the same i did build up for this article, but as you can see its character did get more personal:

So far - hope this article could help the one or the other. Take it as an inspiration for your own transport box or if you are lazy wait some more moments and you'll see what the apes are planning :)

If any questions may appear about this article feel free to drop a line in form as a comment below this article.

Keep on happy painting!
Regards
Roman