I took the bull by the horns, got some raw materials and started building my new storage boxes. After years of trying in vain to find suitable boxes on the market, I decided it was time I built my own. How hard can it be to knock together some wooden boxes?

Not very, truth be told. I had the bottoms professionally cut, which makes this excercise a whole lot easier. Then I bought some lumber and a selection of self-drilling screws and set about making some prototypes.

Self-drilling screws are great for mass production because they drastically reduce the need to drill pilot holes. The first batch of boxes are rough, but that's what they are -- storage boxes. Not the latest word in indoor design. Not something to leave on the coffee table. Rough and ready storage boxes optimised for the storage shelves in my hobby room and sturdy enough to be stacked on each other.

I'm still in the process of adding magnetic bottoms and I haven't decided if I want handles or not -- should I add them, they'll be simple ParaCord affairs. As I said, these are for storage, not for display or travel.

Don't get me wrong. Those nifty foam trays and boxes are great for travelling with miniatures. But I have something like 5,000 painted miniatures and storing everything in individual foam slots just takes too much space. And most of my miniatures never travel anywhere anyway.

Once I'm done, I'll probably write up a better description with instructions.

In other news, after finishing the Africa stuff I lost direction as usual. I painted the doors from my Battle for Alabaster terrain box, partly to test out a new technique and partly just to get rid of them. I also quickly painted a bunch of MDF containers and cargo boxes. They were pretty simple kits, but in my humble opinion reasonably priced unlike some examples on the market. Well, I guess it also depends on what you want. But I want a dockyard with row upon row of containers, and I ain't paying 10 quid a pop for them no matter how nice models they might be.

Faced with the deluge of 15mm sci-fi stuff I bought, I started painting 15mm infantry even though it seems a bit lost cause. From the sci-fi lot I chose to start with the terminator robots, figuring those would be the easiest. But I also dug up my remaining 15mm WWII Americans, mostly to complete the set and get rid of them...

I quickly recalled how much I hate painting 15mm infantry. And I only have like 650 more of them... sigh... at least with the sci-fi uniforms I can choose whatever color scheme I like. And with 15mm, I like it as simple as possible.

maxxon