Sunday, June 13, 2010

Using Carpet Pad for Figure Storage

An alternative title for this post might have been "Lemonade from Lemons".  Yesterday, my son and I finished cutting and installing a carpet pad and rug that my wife recently acquired.  My retirement sailboat continues to get shorter and shorter, but I digress.

Anyway there was some carpet padding left over - 2, 12'x1' strips and I thought it might be useful for the hobby.  The carpet pad is foam based but seems to grip objects fairly well, which hopefully can reduce transit damage.

The design is very simple - a plastic box that is lined with the padding.  The sectional dividers are strips of foam core that are also lined with the padding.  I used wood or yellow glue to attach the padding.

The joinery for the dividers are simple notches as they are simple to cut and allow for dividers to be removed to accommodate larger models.  Total construction time was 30 minutes but about half of that was me thinking about what to do.  Since everything was made from scraps the total cost of the project was negligible.  The plastic box is made by "Really Useful Boxes" which I find to really useful in figure storage (forgive the pun).

Out of curiosity, I called the oriental rug store and the owner indicate that he also has padding that is not perforated and I was welcome to rummage through his scrap bin.  I was thinking that foam padding might also make good flexible roads.  I'm not sure how the padding will hold paint / flock, but who can pass up the opportunity to root around a rubbish bin!  I'll let you know what I find.

1 comment:

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Buy the boat now and worry about retirement later... :o)))

Interested to see how your idea re. roads works out... I think that stuff is what we call underlay here in the UK??