Carrying Tray

So I've seen a few people at the gaming store carrying around their army from table to table with a tray that has holes cut out in it for the various base sizes.  I decided that I could make such a project work and started in on one.

My first attempt was using MDF.  Not a bad choice but I always forget how much dust is created when you drill or saw it.  I also wasn't sure how close I could put the holes to each other.  So I measured a bit lean and ended up drilling out the pieces between holes.

So I went back to the drawing board.  Decided to use a bit tougher material and remeasure the holes to drill.  I went with 1/4" sanded pine, which came in 2'x4' sheets.  Since the holes for the bases I was going to be cutting were measured in Millimeters I decided to cut my board into 30mmx30mm boards, which gave me 8 total.  I split these into 2 piles of 4 boards.  My thinking was that if I made a large base hole in the top level, then a medium base in the next one down and a small base in the next one, I would have one more board for a base to cover all the bottom.

My next step was drilling the holes in the boards.  I had recently acquired a drill press, now I just needed some bits to drill the holes I needed.  I borrowed some wood hole drill bits from a friend and tried those.  The large and medium bits were alright at drilling, but the small bit would just heat up and burn the wood.  After some investigating I decided to get a set of Forstner bits.  I found one that had all three sizes I needed and proceeded to work.

After drilling through all the holes for the project I got really good at making them without ripping out the backside of the board.  Which I tended to do quite a bit of when I first started.

Once I had drilled out all of the holes it was time to line up all my boards and put in the bolts to hold everything together.  This along with the bolt holes for the handles finished up all the drilling I would need.

Now to finish any sanding it needs and to paint it up. Any color choices from the internet?

Tonights Accomplishments

So tonight between rounds of Fallout Shelter, I finally got back to painting. A coworker gave me some Star Wars figures that he wanted painted.

So I decided that I should dig in and start painting again.  In addition I pulled out some my Bones Kickstarter miniatures and started in on them as well.

So here we have the Shadow, a Pathfinder goblin, a Dwarf sword and board fighter and a rat swarm, in addition to the Rebel Trooper.

I also built something I should have a long time ago.

A block of wood with some poster tack on the end of it.  I've read about painters using them to hold miniatures while painting, but I never thought of myself as a serious enough painter to use one.  Well, wow, was I wrong.  This made it so much easier to look under an arm and paint without smudging or messing up the rest of the of figure. So yeah, I highly recommend making one of those to paint. 

Long Time, No See

Ever since going back to school I've had to put a bunch of my projects and hobbies on a shelf.  Some of those literally. I've also picked up another hobby. I bought a tiny quad copter off of Amazon to learn to fly quads. So far I haven't hurt myself or anyone else. My copter of choice for this endeavor was the Hubsan X4 H107D. Mostly because it was on Amazon Prime and had a camera on it. I watched a few videos on Reddit about fpv video quads and wow are they pretty fun. So reading into the subject, the common wisdom is to buy a cheap little quad to learn how to fly and then move up and build a quad for whatever purpose you'd like. I believe I'll be building one for aerial photography eventually. This hobby brings in my electronics knowledge and training as well, which is a nice bonus. When I decide on a build I will document it for anyone to follow.

In other news I feel an itch to go back to painting. A friend at work asked me to paint up some of his Star Wars miniatures. I haven't painted anything futuristic in quite some time. I think it'll be a good change of pace, and it will be a chance to flex my painting muscles again.