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Friday, June 8, 2018

Sectional Terrain Storage

 As I recover from my little health drama, the wife and I have been doing a little clean out of the stuff (ok, crap) we've accumulated over the years.  It's a depressingly large tally and has almost filled the full sized dumpster I rented.  It's highly likely without this self impose "intervention" we likely would have been featured on one of those awful "hoarders" shows on cable TV in the next few years.

Anyway, the clean out frees up space for more gaming storage and I decided to build a rack to store my 2x4 sectional terrain panels.

Like most of my gaming projects the "racks" are made out of scrap plywood.  The design is very simple - two vertical columns with 3/4 inch rails every three inches.
I used my table saw with a cross-cutting sled to cut the 1/8 dados (slots) in a plywood sheet that was 10 inches wide and 24 inches tall.  Once the dado's were cut, the table saw was used to rip the plywood into 4, 2.5 inch x 24 inch column.  Doing it this sequence ensures all the dados line up.

I then cut some 1/8 inch plywood in the 1.5 inch strips and placed them in the dados to form the rails fro the terrain to rest on.  In hindsight I should have gone with 1/4 inch plywood as these are a little flimsy but the panel are light so I should be ok.

You can see the remnants of my old model railroad layout on the shelf - all the trains and buildings were packed away just in case I return to that hobby.

Here's a shot of the installed unit with my 8, 2x4 panels nestled in their slots.  I'm very pleased with how it came out.  I've also got some 2x2 and 1x1 panels that will be stored in a similar way.

These panels are pretty beat up and need a restoration project.  The endeavor will occur in the next few weeks.

The panels are located in a little 8x8 ft room thats adjacent to my gaming table - the other side has an old workbench which I'll be using for terrain making and that will likely be topic of the next blog post.

One of the more embarrassing things that has happened during "operation declutter" is I've stumbled across a bunch of stuff I forgot I had!  Some examples include:

- A Dewalt sable saw that was barely used (I was just about to go out and replace my current one - bonus!)
- a box board of woodland scenics ground foam and clump foliage - pretty much a lifetime supply
- a Noch static grass applicator

3 comments:

  1. My wife and I have been 'decluttering' our house recently...but I haven't rediscovered any 'lost' gaming goodies. Mind you the clearup isn't over so I guess there is still hope!

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  2. Your carpentry skills, as well as your modelling skills, are most impressive, Miles! Here I thought I had a storage issue using plastic stackable bins from Walmart! :)

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  3. Nice result we all need more storage !🤔

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