Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Tutorial: Making Movement Trays

There have been quite a number of people asking me how I make my movement trays for my army. I have often toyed with the previous editions of movement trays that GW used to make but found it far too restrictive both cost and time wise. Looking around for a better solution, I finally settled on the method below and I am pleased.

It has the following benefits:

  1. Metal models can mount slopes/hill - of course this implies that plastics can too! 
  2. Storage is simple. Just pop them into a massive box that will withstand crushing and you can move the army enbloc to a different venue
  3. No more fidgeting the corners due to GW trays which add about 1" to the footprint of your regiments - measurements are made exactly to your models' actual base
  4. Easy and fast to make
Steps:
This entire process takes less than 15 minutes. 

Attach a rare earth magnet to your model's base. I chose Diameter 5x2.5mm thick. I found this perfect as it rest flush when the model is standing so don't have to fidget with green stuff. Just Super Glue and pop the magnet under! 


As you can see it's flushed when the model is standing. 

Mass produce this onto all your units

Go down to your gaming store/hardware store and pick up one of these packs. Called Flexmetal, these are awesome! They are soft and can be cut using your modelling knife.
 Nothing particular about the sheet but they do come in A4 sizes. Heavy too!

Cut the amount of metal you need. Since I needed a 10x1 (@20mm per model), I measured out a strip of 200mm x 20mm

Taking the same measurements, I duplicated it on a piece of backing board/cardboard. Remember to find a sturdy material as the Fleximetal is soft. Very soft.

Glue them together. Ensure the edges are glued down tight. You will notice the edges are actually white since my backing board is white on one side.

Easily remedied, I use a thick white board marker to line the corners creating a perfect black movement tray.

Now I mount all the Archers on the movement tray.

To demonstrate what I meant by the strength, you can imagine if this unit of Archers were propped against a hill it would not fall. As the magnets are really strong, they hold metal models really well too! 

Now go on! Make trays! 

3 comments:

  1. Daniel mentioned that Daiso sell cheaper flexmetal sheets. $2 for A4 size. I will go scout for it or call him to show me a sample and see how is the quality.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's really good. Can you pick up a pack of those sheets for me too? Good to test!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good work. I can see some funky 40k uses for this stuff too...

    ReplyDelete

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