The worst of winter is mostly past here, so what day would be better than today* to emerge from my den for a long overdue post?
For years I have been either converting over or designing my different space ranges to all use the same 1/8 acrylic rods for stands to match Firestorm Armada, and by not gluing them in I can switch them out between different base types at any point. Another benefit of separate stands is a big reduction in the amount of the space required for the ships, but they do require a different approach to storage...
My first run through of storage was with foam, and with the small scale of my Clone Wars ships, not to mention the volumes, custom cuts were not an option. After several trials I settled on cloth-backed foam, a specialty fabric that is used in backpack straps, and purse walls. Instead of most other hobby foam sheets available for miniatures, cloth-backed foam comes in much thinner sheets than traditional hobby or pluck alternatives, and has a fine nylon mesh that is heat fused into one side of the sheet.
The mesh takes inks well from a pattern, and assists in easy cutting through with a minimum of warping. The only downside of this, is that as a fabric, cloth-backed foam has to be purchased by bolt, in bulk, as in 6-9 square yards at a time... four years and I have still not finished working through my first 3/16 inch order from Pellon.
Soft foam guards against light impacts, and paint chipping, but is not really transportable and requires a container. Here enters probably my best discovery regarding miniatures, the photo storage case. These plastic containers are usually available at most hobby stores, and have slats inside to hold either 12 or 16 standard sized 4 x 6 inch smaller cases.
Perfect for my scales, I cut the sizes of foam to the matching size and with some careful planning can fit hundreds of ships into a reasonably small space with identification labels viewable through the clear sides.
At this point, bubble wrap entered the picture as I would put a single sheet against the lid to protect against drops, and then some ships that were not storable in a regular way have ended up just between layers of bubble wrap. I have not seen any paint transferring occur yet on these ships but do not see that as an ideal situation. That has led me to the third method for casing small scale models, cardstock...
The smooth surface of cardstock seemingly has no effect on fully sealed models, and is a hundredth of the cost of foam sheets as well as a fraction of the cutting time. It does not look as aesthetically pleasing as foam, but then again, any savings of time on storage can go towards improving the appearance of the ships inside.
All in all, I cannot give an unequivocal recommendation to these storage solutions that I have settled on since all model lines have different requirements, but I can 100% recommend looking at outside of the box hobby problems and hope this has stirred some ideas in the readers for their own situations.
*Unfortunately, I did see my shadow this morning so it looks like it will be another six weeks of 15mm.
