Stalingrad Project: Practical Issues

 

Scenery progress is a little over the halfway point.  One of two 6x4 boards is pretty much done and most of the iconic buildings for the second have been scratch built.  The needed miniatures are also in process and I’m getting some help there from some club members which is greatly appreciated.  

The term “done” is a bit misleading as I’ll keep tweaking with the terrain.  I “may” have found a source of images of a newspaper from Stalingrad dated August, 1942 that I can shrink down to add to the rubble look.  They will be illegible at 15mm scale but still period appropriate.  I’ll pause here while you all roll your eyes......

Finished?, great lest move on.

Terrain making has been paused as I need a break and want to test some rules - I might even publish a set of rules for city fighting.  Sadly, the later point is likely more an act of personal ego inflation than actual contribution to the hobby.

There is one practical issue to work out - how do I organize all this stuff for both storage and transport up to the club or a convention.  The full table is 30 x18 hexes and each hex will labeled on the bottom by row letter and column number (01A all the way to 30Q) so that will aid in setting up but still its 540 hexes.

I need to source or build some containers to hold all this stuff.  Weight really isn’t and issue given the materials I’m using and hexes can be oriented to reduce wasted space in a container.  The total volume of the entire table setup is roughly 20 cubic feet, with the mini’s adding maybe another 5 cubic feet..  All of that will fit in my vehicle and likely may be a lot easier to transport than most of my convention games.

I’m leaning toward just buying some bog standard plastic bins but am intrigued by concept of how cool it would be to rock up to Historicon with all this stuff packed up into replica Soviet ammo and rifle crates.  The mere fact that I could even conceive of such a thing as “cool” proves this blog is aptly named.

Troop Cabinet 2.0 - All Done

 I got up early today and decided to bang out the cabinet and get it installed under my table.  Here's a shot of the installed unit.

 I assembled the cabinet carcass out of 1/2 inch plywood.  Its a simple cube with a divider and the overall dimensions are 21.75 inches wide, 25 inches tall and 18 deep.  The only part that requires some precision is placing the middle column as it if its off to one side the drawers will not fit.  I just made 10 1/8 inch spacer for each side to make sure the placement was accurate.  The drawer gaps are set to be 10 1/8 inch wide - 10 inches for the drawer and 1/8 of "wiggle" room.

I then cut the drawer runners.  Like the earlier troop cabinet, I'm using very simple wood platforms as runners.  Putting drawer slides in would just be too expensive and add a lot of un-needed weight.

Putting in the runners is a bit tedious (OK, a lot tedious)

 With the cabinet built, all that was left was to finish all the drawers. I had built 5 as a trial a few days ago so just had 11 to go.  All the wood was cut and using my handy dandy drawer jig got these 11 done in less than an hour.  My average assemble time Wass 2 minutes and 40 seconds per drawer.   Yes, I did time myself.  Why? - because I'm a geek.

 After sanding the drawers, I attached the drawer pulls.  I had just enough of the library card pulls to put one on every drawer.  I like these pulls a lot and think the add a good bit to the look.

 When building projects that need to fit in a specific area there's always a bit of an apprehensive walk when you carry the unit and try it's fit for the first time.  No need for worry as I got the measurements right.  OK - given my track record on measurement accuracy, there was a lot of need to worry.

 Look! there's room for 6,000 15mm scale troops

 A shot looking down from the table top

and the first troops have taken up residence - my 15mm Imperial Romans and

Sassanids.

The project has been on my to-do list for many, many months so it felt great getting it knocked out.  Sunday will be spent re-organizing the war game rooms and filling up these drawers.

Troop Transport Expansion: More Drawer, Please

 A little over a year ago, I built a custom troop storage and transport cabinet.  The goal was to make something the efficiently stores my 15mm Napoleonics collection and help me cart stuff around to put on big convention games.  At the risk of sounding a little self-congratulatory I was thrilled with how it came out.  The cabinet worked fantastically at Historicon and made both transport and keeping my troops organized a snap.  Another plus was there were zero figures damaged in transport.

I've decided to build some more troop storage under my game table and will be using the same drawer size as the troop transport so I can switch drawers out to get ready for future convention games.  I'll also be making some improvements to the base unit (security, more compartments but that's a future project).

 The first step in any project that has some repetitive aspects is to build a jig.  The jig is built to the exact outside dimension of a drawer which is 10 x 16.5 inches and 3 inches high.   There no magic to those dimensions - it's just what I decided to use when building the first set.

With the jig done, I then moved on to cutting the parts - I had enough scrap to make 5 drawers and that was a good number to refine the build process.  I also got to use "Betsy" my trusty cross-cut sled.  I'm sure all of you name your jigs also.  Well if you don't, then, you're just weird - "aren't they, Betsy?"

 OK all the wood is cut.  Each drawer requires the following parts:

2, 10 x 2.75 inch 1/2 inch plywood

2, 15.5 x 2.75 inch 1/2 inch plywood

1, 10 x 16.5 inch 1/4 inch plywood (bottom)

I'm using simple but joints - not the best looking but fast and strong enough.

Exterior drawer dimension remains 10 x 16.5 x 3 inches

Lets try the jig - plop the sides in with a bit of wood glue and brad nail them in place.  Nice, snug fit.

Put the bottom piece on and with glue and brad nails (I did get a new nail gun and love using it). The nail holes are that visually appealing but it I'm not making fine furniture.

Total assemble time - including cutting the wood, roughly 7 minutes.

but does it fit in the cabinet?

 Yup - it fits perfectly!  I'll need to do some sanding and finishing but will wait until the weather warms up a bit.

Ok 5 drawers built in under 30 minutes.

I didn't have enough 1/4 ply to have single piece bottoms for all the drawers so two of the drawers have bottom made of two pieces of 1/4 plywood.  I ran an interior brace across the seam to create some stability and ended up with a nice pencil / dice storage area.  So that's the way I umm planned it...

I'm planning to build another 15 drawers for a total of twenty.  That should allow me to hide - oops store a lot more new miniature acquisitions.

Rolling Troop Cabinet "Plans"

Several people have asked for plans for the rolling cabinet.  To be honest, the project was pretty much built on the fly, with the only real "thinking" going into the dimensions of the storage trays.  I'll summarize the logic below and provide a cut lists so, hopefully, that helps.

In the past I have used a lot of the plastic "Really Useful" boxes for storage and transport.  Iv'e got a ton of them and over the course of the years have made some interior organizers and wanted to make sure those fit inside the new drawers.  The internal dimensions of the standard 4 liter Really Useful box is 12.5 inches long by 8.5 inches wide x 2.75 inches high.

Those dimensions set the lower bounds of the drawer size.  The final interior dimensions for the drawers was set to:

9.5 inches wide
15.5 inches long
3 inches high (but wait there's an adjustment coming)

These would allow me to use all my past organizers and give a bit more storage space.

Now there was on more consideration in drawer design - the runners.  I could have gone with store purchase metal runners that attach to the sides but decided against that due to both cost and weight.  I went with very simple fixed rails that the drawers sit on top of.  The minimum size of the rails was guesstimated to by 1/2x1/2 inch and 16.5 inches long.  I used a 2.5 inch spacer to ensure the rails where space properly and then glued and screwed each rail into place.  The placement still wasn't perfect so there was a lot of hand sanding afterwords to get all the rails level with one another.

In hindsight it would have been a lot easier and more accurate to have cut dado's (slots into the plywood) before assembling the case.

The 1/2 inch height of each rail needed to be deducted from the drawer height to allow room for the drawer to slide in, thus the overall height of each drawer was reduced to 2.5 inches.

The drawers themselves were constructed to there width of plywood.  1/2 inch plywood for the fronts and backs, 1/4 inch for the sides and 1/8 inch for the bottom.  You could use the same dimensions - say 1/2 inch but that adds a lot of weight to an already heavy item that is intend to be mobile.

The final cut list for each drawer is:

Drawer Front and back:
- 2, 10" x 2.5 inch, 1/2 inch pieces of plywood with a 1/8 deep x 1/4 inch wide rabbet cut along the bottom.  A rabbet is just a section cut out along the corner of a piece of wood to allow another piece to fit snugly.

Sides:
- 2 15.5 inch x 2.375 inch lengths of 1/4 inch wide plywood

Bottom
- 1 10 inch x 16 inch piece of 1/8 plywood

Now do all those cuts 14 times......

The cabinet will hold the really useful boxes if the lids are removed but I liked the look of wood better than plastic - majestic miniatures soldiers should be stored in wooden boxes not mass produced plastic ones - it just seems to be the right thing to do!

The drawers are assembled upside down when glued together.  Since this is a receptive task, I strongly urge using a jig to keep all the section square and speed the build process.

Whew - that was probably more to type out than actually do.

With the drawer size set the next step is the build the cabinet.  I wanted to use 1/2 inch plywood and liked the look of two columns of drawers  in the cabinet.  Therefore, the width of the cabinet was set with the following very arcane and complicated formula:

width of 2 drawers:  2 x 10" = 20 inches
plus with of 3 1/2 inch pieces of plywood:  3 x .5 = 1.5 inches
plus 1/4 inch of room to allow drawers to slide easily = 1/4 inch

Total Width = 21.75 inches

The depth of the box was easy as the drawers were already set at 16.5 inches long.   I added another two inches to allow for storage in the drawers so the overall depth is 18.5 inches.

The height was the tricky part.  This thing needs to be able to fit in my car, which limited the overall height to be now more than 24 inches.

Butt joints and screws plus glue was used for the joinery - simple and strong.  The cut list for the case is

Sides and interior support
3 x 1/2 inch plywood 23 inches high x 18.0 inches deep
 (why isn't the height 24"? to account for the width of the top and bottom which are attached to the sides as pictured to the left.  Same for the width but with 1/4 inch plywood.

Top and bottom
2 x 1/2 inch plywood 21.75 inches wide and 18.5 inches deep

Front and back
2 x 1/4 inch plywood that is 24 inches high and 21.75 inches wide

Its really important when assembling the carcass of the case that everything be square - the drawer need to fit all along the width of the openings.  As you can see in the picture to the left, I cut some spacers and clamped them in place to ensure the box would be square and everything fit.

Rolling Base
The rolling case is just a simple 3/4 inch plywood box.  I went with 3/4 inch plywood to make sure the base was sturdy enough to securely carry the weight of the cabinet.  The dimensions of the base are 13.5 inches high by 22.75 inches wide and 19.5 inches deep.  The width and depth are one inch longer than the actual cabinet so I can fir a mounting lip around three sides.  The height was based on the plywood I had left but you don't want the base too much higher for stability concerns.  The cut list is

Sides:
2, 12inch x 19.5 inch 3/4 inch plywood

Tops and Bottom
2, 19.5 inch x 22.75 inch plywood

Back
1 12 inch x 21.25 inch 3/4 plywood

Doors
1 22.75 inch x 13.5 inch piece of 1/2 inch plywood that is then cut in half.

The mounting lip made of sections of 1/2 inch plywood.  There are 3 3 inch wide strips that run across the sides and back of the case with 1.5 inch protruding over the top.  2 18.5 inch x 1.5 inch strips are added to the sides to snug up to the cabinet and hold it in place.

The wheels are simple workshop rolling casters.  The front two have a locking mechanism which is really important - when loaded with minis this case could weight upwards to 90 pounds and that could gain a good bit of momentum if it was left on a slight incline....  Locking wheels are a must!

I think that's all the info I can provide on the "plans" for the case.  Perhaps the most important piece of advice I can give you if you find woodworking daunting is to just give it a try - it's easy after you get a little practice and anyone with the artistic skills to paint miniatures can easily acquire the more basic skills for elementary woodworking.

Good Luck!

File and Troop Storage Case: The Doors

 The doors have been added and attached.  Technically the door were cut....

With the frame complete, the next step was to cut two pieces of 1/4inch plywood to cover the front and back faces.  The drawers were removed before doing so, or course.

With the front and back attached the case was now just a 18 x 22 x 24 inch rectangle that was solid on all sides - not much use eh?  The able saw was set to a width of 1.5 inches and I passed all four sides of the front face of the case along the saw and bingo the front doors piece was cut.  The "new" front section was then cut down the middle and turning into a pain of doors which were then mounted on hinges.

Easy Peasy, right...

Not so much - given how heavy and awkward the piece was, I had a lot of tear out out and should have added a support on the front of the saw to help me manage the job better.  In retrospect I was attempting a pretty dangerous cut and just didn't think it through.  That's really inexcusable as shop safety should always be the primary consideration of any project.  I am more than a little chagrined.

There were two tear outs along what is the top of the case - you can see the notch cut in the top center support and you look close at the upper left corner of the tight side door I had to cut out and replace a 1/2" x 6" section of plywood.

To quote the great philosopher H. Simpson: "Dohhhh!!!!"

Sanding and finishing are the next steps in the projectThe next step of the project.  There will be a lot of sanding.....

So, how many mini's fit in a drawer?

A lot

My 15mm Peninsular British army has 123 bases of infantry and they all fill in a single drawer with room for some cavalry.

I really like "old style" drawer pulls.

This project is nearing completion and just in time, too!  As Tamsin pointed out, I'll be filling a good part of the unit with what is painted over the course of the upcoming Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge #9.

File and Troop Storage Case: The Drawers

Both units (I'm making two) have 14 drawers each so that's a total of 28, 10 inch x 16.5 inch drawers I need to make.  They need to be pretty precise dimensionally as there's only 1/8 inch leeway in the widths of the drawer slots.

As with most repetitive wood working projects that require precision - the answer is "make a jig".  In this case the jig is a simple U-shaped frame that defines the outside dimensions of each drawer.  One end of the jig was left open to make it easier to put the drawer pieces in.

At the this point the jig has been used to make about 24 drawers so is a little beat up but it still works.  The jig is just some straight strips of plywood clamped in place.  One screw (left center)  used to hold the frame as it was hard to clamp there.

Step one is to place the four pieces that make up the drawer sides into the jig.  The two end pieces are 1/2 inch plywood 10 inches long and 2.5 inches high with a 1/8 inch rabbit cut along one long side.  The rabbit will help hold the bottom in place.

The two long sides are 15.5 inches long and 2 3/8 inches high so they along with the bottom of the rabbit groves.

I'm using a simple butt joint here (glueing the ends together).  a thing bead of wood glue is added to each end of the long pieces and then the sides are assembled together.  It's important to everything is square here as it makes the rest of the steps really easy.

I cut some spacers to insert inside the drawers to keep the sides from bowing in.  I had intended for the spaces to not be permanent and for the previous drawers that was the case.  For the last few, I had run out of 1/8 inch plywood that was 16 inches long and had to use shorter cutoff sections.  These were into 8 x 10 inch lengths.  doing so requires that a support brace be installed across the point where the two bottom section meet.

The first bottom section is placed so I can mark where to put the spacer and also make sure the other bottom section is cut to the exact length it needs be.

And now both sections are in place.  The seem where the two bottom section meet in the middle run along the center space.

 A bead of glue is added along the bottom edges and after placing the floor sections the whole thing is weighted down with whatever is handy in the shop.

To ensure a tight fit, I pushed up with a straight piece of plywood against the open end of the jig  and hold it there for a minute of two while the glue initially sets up.

If I've done everything right, the glue squeeze out should be evenly distributed across the edges.  As you can see in the picture there's a little gap in the center left (right next to the clamp).  I mark these with a pencil and will touch them up after taking the drawer out of the jig.

Once all the gaps have been marked the squeeze is cleaned up with a damp shop towel.  It takes about 30 minutes for the glue to set up enough to remove the drawer from the jig.  When the drawer if removed I can also clean up any squeeze out on the interior as the glue is still soft.

A last shot of how I tough up the glue gaps - add a little more glue and then re-clamp.

Not the most exciting of gaming posts but storage is an important part of the hobby, especially of one is married!

Test Subject Filing Cabinet & Contest Winners!

The secret project is a test subject filing cabinet for the wife, who is a surgeon.  When involved in research she typically keeps stuff in tidy piles in her locked office.  There are a wide variety of materials - papers, x-rays, thumb drives, preserved tissue samples, etc.  Given that variety, her neat little pile method doesn't always work well.

In reality almost all the materials outside of the samples can be stored digitally, but lets just say the Mrs hasn't fully adapted to a electronic world.

So I decided to build her a cabinet that will be lockable (need to add the doors).  There are 14 drawers that slide out which should be enough because her tests batches typically run at 10.  Each draw is 16.5 inches long x 10 inches wide x 2.5 inches high.

 In order to reduce weight and because I'm cheap, I didn't use traditional commercial drawers slides and made the simple rails you see in the second picture.

 Making 14 drawers is a bit tedious but easy if you break the process down into steps.  I'll do a separate post about that later.

There were a lot of drawers.
















As for the contest, there were 8 submissions and while none were exactly right I'd have to judge Gator as being closest to correct!

Congrats Gator!

As for the random winner from the remaining 8, I listed them out in order of submission and used the wizards of the coast online dice roller for a D8:

1 William D
2 Martin C
3 Francis L
4 Carl H
5 Ray R
6 Michael M
7 Hamster C
8 Reroll (of course)

The results? - well I was a bit surprised when the Wizards of the coast decide to roll a number "5"

Congrats to Ray for winning the second dice tower.

Gator: Please let me know via a comment how to reach you by email so we can figure out how to send the tower to you.  Ray - I have your information.

The towers will be built over the next few weeks.

Congrats to the winners and thanks for all the submission!

One final note, some of you may be thinking - "wow, that design looks like it would be great to store miniatures in".  I had the same thoughts also.  So I'm building a second one - one for the wife and her horrible human experiments and one for me and the storage of my noble miniature troops.

It's a his & her set - I'm such a romantic.

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