Create an Airbrush Carrying Case

My wonderful wife picked me up a new airbrush a while back. It's another Iwata, but moving up from a 0.35mm to a 0.2mm and yes, it makes a difference. But before that I kept my airbrush on my hobby shelf, nothing fancy and now I have a second one to take care of. I wanted to make a nice case for it for a few reasons.

First and foremost I needed a nice case to store and protect them, but also because my Favorite Local Gaming Store has a painting bar with airbrush compressors and I've been working on getting a little more mobile with my hobby supplies.

Building Yourself a Cheap Tabletop

For a while now, I've been wanting to make some sort of war-table that'd allow TheWife and I (and any guests) to game. A buddy and I built a full size table before, but that doesn't exactly work in an apartment. I've been pondering and doing some mental planning recently after taking notice of how the FLGS extends their Magic tables for WarmaHordes. Last weekend I spent some time and built myself a wargaming field. In this post, I'm going to show you how. (And cheaply!)

After building it, TheWife liked it so much, she decided I needed to build a second one to keep out all the time. It fills our living room nicely, and will work great for board games, card games, puzzles, etc.

Pre-Vyper Jetbike (My first conversion)

Zoids Neptune, 1987 catalog

Game Workshop's he-love of Space Marines has existed far longer than you may realize. When I first started playing Warhammer 40k, you could get vehicles like Bikes, Speeders, Rhinos and Land Raiders... but what about us Xenos? I had a codex with rules for Shining Spears, Vyper Jetbikes and I think Falcons and Wave Serpents too...  But no models.

This isn't a tale of conversion for the sake of conversion, this is conversion for necessity!

Spice Rack Flock Container

 Behold! A spice rack!

I've been casually hunting one of these for a while now and, thanks to garage sale season being upon us, I found one! For under $5 I got this wooden rotating spice rack, 40 jars and some sewing supplies for TheWife. If garage sales aren't your thing, dollar stores carry these jars at 3 for a dollar and I see spice racks on sale all the time at mall kitchen supply stores for $15-30.

Click through, and I'll discuss turning all these goodies into containers for flock.

Shop Smart

artist: GaryStorkamp

Not often in our hobby are we dealing with items where we have to shop around a whole bunch and try to get the better deal - but there are occasions. Most of our purchases will be at our Favorite Local Gaming Store and we don't need to worry about warranties, price matching and so on.

Sometimes though, we're buying higher end tools for our hobbies - things like drills, Dremels, compressors, boomsticks, etc... When we do, it's important that you get the right quality and don't get ripped off.

The following article isn't limited to just hobbying - you should be able to apply it to most other things you shop for.

Saving Money, Time and Convenience

Written for the House of Paincakes while Dethtron works on a super secret project...

"Snatch back your life!"

For some of us, the time investment into a hobby like tabletop wargaming can be just as costly as actual out of pocket expenses. Rather than talk about saving you money in this article, I'm going to talk about saving time and other things. Younger gamers may not fully grasp this, but people with significant others, children, jobs and other responsibilities will probably agree - and younger gamers, maybe this will help free up time to do homework, get a job (and afford more minis / supplies) enjoy other things like video games, movies, friends and RL.

In the end, your sanity may thank you the most.

Finding Cheap Army Containers

I wrote this as part of Dethtron's Gaming on a Budget series over at House of Paincakes and didn't want to leave all y'all out.

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Lets face it, wargaming is an expensive hobby. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not your friend - they just want you to play so there's someone they can beat or so they won't be the n00b at the local store anymore. To offset just how expensive this hobby is, there are corners you can cut - and I don't mean "cut" as in, did you know brake lines make good scale metal tubing? That would be highly inappropriate... cheap terrain is going to be another article.

If you're looking for a way to carry your models around that won't scratch them up, there's plenty of options besides dropping a ton of money on professional carrying cases. Most of this stuff you can get from around the house and often for free.

source: Bolters and Balsa

Egg Cartons give you about the right sizing for 6-12-18 models (depending on the size of your carton) because eggs are about the size of our minis. Monstrous Creatures can sometimes lay sideways and still fit.

Shoe boxes will fit Monstrous Creatures, vehicles or a bunch of loose models. You could make dividers for these out of cereal box cardboard though, so things don't rattle around - something that will chip paint and break glued joints. I wonder if shoe stores end up with empty boxes from people who want to wear their new shoes home?

These can all end up stacking on each other for storage or transport.

source: inetGiant

You can also buy plastic containers from hobby stores like Michaels or Hobby Lobby. This starts getting less economical at $10-20 a container, but you might be able to buy them on sale and over a long period as your army grows. These have the advantage of being sturdier and can often be found with plastic dividers.

source: world of green

You'll want a larger box to put smaller containers into, making it easier to transport armies. Cardboard boxes come in all sorts of shapes and if you go into big box stores like Walmart, Staples, Future Shop, Best Buy, Target, etc, you might be able to ask for some for free. However, while moving, I've recently discovered a lot of these places have newer policies against giving away boxes - this could be store/regional policy, but I've instead had great luck getting boxes from smaller independently owned stores instead. (computer / electronic shops)

Boxes that are great for this are those big sturdy boxes that reams of paper are sold in. (Reams are those packs of 500 pages most people buy) Stores that sell the 500 packs individually have them shipped in the same large boxes they also sell, throwing out the empty boxes. Your parents work may also have extra boxes. Sometimes these will have holes on the sides as handles too.

source: Staples

Office supply stores also carry small storage bins for letter or legal sized paper filing. These might run you $10-20 or so, but they tend to go on sale often. Another benefit here is that they'll be much more rugged than a cardboard box and might have handles.

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The Cadillac of low-end is probably the tackle (fishing) box. Yes, good quality ones go for $40-60, but there are always cheap ones around. Check garage sales, Kijiji, Craigs List, the local paper and other used sources and you can probably find a good deal. "Just an old tackle box" tends to get sold off cheap. If there's lures included, you can either keep them as bits, or haggle with the seller to exclude them and lower the price. Not as much room for vehicles and monstrous creatures, but usually some. If you can't find one used, this is the sort of thing that goes on sale quite often, especially on holidays like Fathers Day. Find a good deal on a tackle box, and it will be the last army case you ever need.

• Fun fact, some tackle boxes can be fit into those long bag-like suitcases.
• Fun fact #2, long bag-like suitcase handles are sometimes spaced so that you can put your arms through them and carry it on your back.
• Fun fact #3, I have intimate memories from my childhood of bicycling 30 minutes in the blistering sun with a tackle box digging into my spine while it bounces around, scratching the minis within... ah the things we do to game.

The expensive option
source: Bell of Lost Souls

Next up, to protect your minis, you either want to line their containers with something or wrap them up. (Though wrapping and unwrapping an army takes a lot of extra time, and it means you can't see who's who)

Foam is usually best for this - However, for those of you not aware, foam is porous gold. It's great to line your containers with to protect your minis, but it can bankrupt you unless you have a mysterious source of cheap foam. (Which some people gain access to in weird and wonderful ways from time to time) For particularly important minis, you can use foam saved from blister packs.

Rather then dumping your savings into foam, line your containers with cheap options such as paper towel, Kleenex, toilet paper, etc. (Maybe your parents won't notice if you slowly build your collection over a week or so)

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Here are some further tips from the community on cheap army containers:

• Cheap Army Transport Trays from Menelker @ Dark Future Games
• Cheap, Quality Army Case Video! from Old School @ Dark Future Games
• From the comments at House of Paincakes
• Dethtron suggests $10-20 pistol cases
• Loquacious suggests duct tape + cardboard, video/camera bags, craft bags and reminds us Michaels and Hobby Lobby always have 40% or so coupons floating around.
• A few people suggest KR Multicase, however this company just seems like any other case seller.
• Their cheapest model is a $40 cardboard box with a handle - for the same price, you can get a hard plastic tacklebox brand new that'll actually protect your minis.