Some years ago, I visited the late Stuart Asquith at his home in the Cotswolds. When he retired and moved there, he did something that now makes a lot of sense to me; he created the 'army in a box' concept. He had a special cabinet constructed and allocated a draw in each to an army. Once that army had filled the draw, no further units or figures were added to it.
My Belle Époque collection is currently stored in an eleven-draw Really Useful Boxes tower unit. Its draws are slightly larger than A4 in size and have a removable sheet of magnetic sheet fixed to a thin sheet of plywood in their bottom.
© Really Useful Boxes.
I have recently discovered a problem with this storage ... it isn't very easy to lift the whole army out in one go. I then remembered Stuart's 'army in a box' and thought to myself that if I could find a suitable box that would fit into the draw, it could serve two purposes:
- To enable me to lift an entire army out of the draw in one go and
- To place a physical limit on the size of each of my Belle Époque armies.
Luckily, I had a number of A4-sized Weston Boxes close at hand, ...
© Weston Boxes.
... and I am now in the process of transferring each army into its new box ... which fits nicely into one of the draws in the Really Useful Boxes tower unit.
PS. Some of the smaller armies fit into A5-sized Weston Boxes ... of which I also have a few available!
Sounds like you have found a good solution for two issues. An easy way to access the force when ready to use, and a practice limit to a forces size. Well done
ReplyDeleteWEK 3,
DeleteI spent this morning moving my entire Belle Époque collection into their new boxes, and I have room left for another large army or two smaller ones.
All the best,
Bob
I much prefer the Weston boxes to the Really Useful ones. I have quite a number of them!
ReplyDeleteMike,
DeleteThe Weston Boxes are very useful and I probably have almost as many as I have Really Useful Boxes. I find the latter better for long-term storage in our storage unit as they are designed to stack on top of each other.
All the best,
Bob
Bob -
ReplyDeleteI think I prefer your storage/barracks system to mine! Any of them. My Romans are few enough to fit into a chocolate box, but my other armies require lotsa containers.
I have 'tray towers', which house my Napoleonics, WSS and 30YW armies. My Prussians, British and most of my Russians occupy 2 trays each, but in the case of my French and Austrians its a case of 'Army Corps in a tray'. As my French comprise 6 Army Corps, 2 Cavalry Corps and the Imperial Guard, with some 'doubling up' they go in about 6 trays.
Five 33cmx37cm trays are required for my 30YW armies; my WSS go into 2 only, but I have more figures in the pipeline.
I have 3 such towers, 10 trays each, except that two of them contain 26cmx34cm trays. The towers can be wheeled around, or the trays drawn as required. The downside of the system is that they will accumulate dust and lint and the occasional dead insect.
I could go on about my other armies' accommodations, but I think I have an article here!
Cheers,
Ion
Archduke Piccolo (Ion),
DeleteOver the years I've used all sorts different storage systems, but nowadays I've begun to concentrate on using Really Useful Boxes and draw units, allied with Weston Boxes. I have also opted to use magnetic sheets in the bottom of these boxes and steel paper stuck to the bottom of unit bases or individual metal bases ... the latter usually being coins.
At one point I used box files, but they didn't stack easily (or safely) on top of each other.
I look forward to reading an article about your figure storage.
All the best,
Bob
Ah storage! Always a conundrum. I have plenty of the right sized boxes, for now, but no cabinet/cupboard to put them in as they outgrew the combined toy/book cupboard.
ReplyDeleteNundanket,
DeleteSolving the storage conundrum is one reason why we acquired a storage unit and I downsized my book and wargame collections.
All the best,
Bob
Bob, some elegant storage solutions.
ReplyDeleteMy Soldier King armies had a self-imposed limit due to using old ex-HMSO file boxes. When it started, there were enough for the main armies in 1.5 to 2 boxes each. As more were acquired, the armies grew, but with a limit imposed by the number of boxes. The main kingdoms have 2 each, Estavia 3, Electoral forces 2 and the others currently 1 each. I recently looked at what else would fit, revamped and re-explored the recruitment system and added a cavalry brigade to 3 kingdoms which balanced out a discrepancy. It also allowed me to work out what other units could be recruited for the others, as well as accommodating militia / rebels.
The boxes are sturdy with wood in the construction, are slightly bigger than A4 (foolscap?) and are relatively deep - one design feature is ensuring flag staffs fit when finished and based.
My 15mm ancients live in various plastic storage boxes, some found many years ago (slide storage boxes?) to be perfect for 40mm wide based DBA armies - pikes, elephants and cavalry with long upright weapons need deeper boxes.
For many years, I could fit them into a bag with two plastic tool boxes which contained all the scenary.
SCW currently reside in two shallow A4 box files. Most of the rest are in boxes or A4 box files - I started moving over to those a few years ago.
Neil
Neil Patterson (Neil),
DeleteI also used to use box files to store my figures, but an accident (i.e. a stack of them decided to fall off the shelf they were on and quite a few figures ended up damaged) made me look for other solutions.
I did try using wooden draw units from IKEA ... and they looked nice and seemed - at first - to work quite well. However, the draws often seemed to stick if you didn't pull them out absolutely correctly and jerking them tended to cause the figures to become unattached from the magnetic sheets lining the draws.
All the best,
Bob
Weston boxes are brilliant - I'm on their mailing list and only buy when they have a half price sale of boxes - you get very little choice of colour of boxes, some being a mix of two, but who cares about that?
ReplyDeleteRob Young,
DeleteI didn’t know that they had a mailing list and had half price sales! Thanks for that information … and cheap is always good!
All the best,
Bob