Micro Armor Storage

[Gazza]

Whilst I'm at it (photo taking that is) here's a few more...

Some miscellaneous photos of stuff that's not currently in the toolboxes. Either new items or repairs/replacements for stuff that got broken/lost when moving house.

Mostly 21st Panzer Division stuff




Heavy flak (88mm and 105mm)


I/R Panther Company + assorted towed guns


Infantry guns misc. stuff.


Pak 43s


Pak 43/41s


Blurry SdKfz 251/17s


SdKfz 251/17 variant


SdKfz 251/21s


BV138s and Junkers EF128 escort


Hs 129s (for a friend)


More of those SdKfz 251/17 and SdKfz 251/21s

[Extra Crispy]

Nice collection. Do you make those boxes?

Dad was in the infantry so anytime i see an army with no infantry.....

[Beagle]

Yeah, I’m also curious about the boxes, do you make those? And excellent use of the flag as a drop cloth

[Gazza]

Nice collection.

Thanks.

Do you make those boxes?

Yeah from card with corrugated cardboard bases - the only costs are my time and the pva glue.

Dad was in the infantry so anytime i see an army with no infantry.....

I've probably gone a little overboard with the infantry (and the rest if I'm honest). I've got a full Panzer Grenadier Regiment at theoretical strength plus a bunch of infantry/engineer/fallschirmjaeger... companies. That's at one element = one squad/section. Each base is 1" / 25mm wide and they would roughly cover 28 (33 if you include recce squads and support weapons) feet of table.

[Gazza]

The box making process

After measuring my vehicles I draw the sides of the boxes out (rounding up to the nearest millimetre). The interior walls are 5mm high and the exterior ones 10mm (which I find is normally higher than the vehicle height - I sometimes need higher walls for AA vehicles, cranes etc.)


I then cut them out for each unit. Here I'm doing three companies worth of boxes.


I then cut them into the individual walls.


And then cut the notches so that the walls can intersect.


The walls are then glued together. I normally support them between two cd covers (or similar) whilst they dry.


The cardboard base is then glued on once the previos stage has dried.


Once that stage has dried, I finally trim the base to fit the walls.

[Extra Crispy]

Nothing succeeds like excess. Currently building a Soviet tank regimetn at 1:1...

[Gazza]

My other storage method (for vehicles / infantry etc.) is based on what a few of my local club members use. I tend to use A4 boxfiles though rather than the plastic container show in the image below. Each tray has a thick card bottom. The exterior walls and the interior dividers are made from balsa. The exterior joints are usually reinforced with metal pins and there are balsa spacers to separate the trays.

This is a C-in-C / GHQ West German army that a friend wants me to finish for him but it should give you the general idea.

[7.62]

Mark, Gazza,
Great collections and and wonderful paint jobs to boot!

Thumbs up on the box construction too.
Most of mine are in Pizza boxes with a thin foam inlays to help keep them in place but they do not need to travel.

[redleg]

That's a fantastic storage system Gazza! And thank you for the tutorial on the boxes! Great work!

I can't get this weird vision out of my mind: remember the TV show Emergency - where the rescue squad would roll up and the paramedics would get out and open up the big cabinets on the side of the truck? They would grab whatever boxes they needed depending on the nature of the call - radio box, drug box, maybe the oxygen or the splint box.

Well I'm picturing a camo truck rolling up to somebody's house for a wargame and you jump out. "We're playing North Africa today - grab the Infantry Box and 3rd Regiment. Don't forget the 88s! and the air support case!"

[nashorn88]

Those are some great boxes you made.
Very talented!

[Brigade Commander]

That's a fantastic storage system Gazza! And thank you for the tutorial on the boxes! Great work!

I can't get this weird vision out of my mind: remember the TV show Emergency - where the rescue squad would roll up and the paramedics would get out and open up the big cabinets on the side of the truck? They would grab whatever boxes they needed depending on the nature of the call - radio box, drug box, maybe the oxygen or the splint box.

Well I'm picturing a camo truck rolling up to somebody's house for a wargame and you jump out. "We're playing North Africa today - grab the Infantry Box and 3rd Regiment. Don't forget the 88s! and the air support case!"

[Gazza]

I can't get this weird vision out of my mind: remember the TV show Emergency - where the rescue squad would roll up and the paramedics would get out and open up the big cabinets on the side of the truck? They would grab whatever boxes they needed depending on the nature of the call - radio box, drug box, maybe the oxygen or the splint box.

Don't remember that show. Maybe it didn't make it to the UK or I forgot it or <insert reason>
That said, what you described reminded me of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds where Thunderbird 2 would change pods depending on the situation. Did something similar happen with the Eagles of Space 1999? (I can't quire remember)

Well I'm picturing a camo truck rolling up to somebody's house for a wargame and you jump out. "We're playing North Africa today - grab the Infantry Box and 3rd Regiment. Don't forget the 88s! and the air support case!"

That might work if I had a 'normal' amount of 88s for a wargames army. I think I've got around 54 towed 88s of various types. And then there's the SP ones.

Air assets are kept in an old lead type cabinet that I keep at the club. Photos next time I'm there!

The armies are usually kept at the club too. The reason I've a few at home is that:

a) I'm sprucing them up. For example the left of these two US M4A3 BHQs is being given a wash, drybrush etc. and will end up looking like the one on the right.


<EDIT>
I forgot that I'd already done the M4A3 BHQ, here they are again, they've swapped sides though and have new boxes. The spruced up one is missing a couple of jeeps.


b) Having a lot of the boxes out at once can be difficult when packing away as sometimes people aren't too sure which box something should go in. In order to help, I'm marking up the boxes with the same marking scheme as the models have. Here's a couple of regiments of ISU-152s as an example.

[Extra Crispy]

Since I base my vehicles on steel bases, I put small "seed beads" on the stands which identify their unit. When I play a game players have TO&E charts so they can just put the troops back on the sheet.

Here's a close up of my beads. The color denotes upper unit so green = 1st battalion or blue = 3rd battalion. The number of beads is the lower level so 1 bead = 1st company, 2 beads = 2nd company etc. A white bead is a commander. A black bead is an FO.



Then a player gets a sheet a bit like this one with his troops on:

[Gazza]

That's an interesting system. For Fire & Fury's Battlefront WW2 rules set, we place our individual models on 30mm square 'coasters' that have the 4 corners painted in various colours to denote platoon, company, battalion, and brigade (IIRC). Unfortunately I don't have any photos of us using that system - I'll see about taking a few next time we play the game. Myself and at least one of the other regular players are colourblind to varying degrees and as such we have to be careful in our choice of colours for such things.

[redleg]

Damn you guys! I used to think I was pretty organized, but now I feel like a micro armor slob!

Fantastic organization and marking systems!