Building A Magnetic Model Transport System

Last June I started collecting Convergence of Cyriss.  Since I was getting the faction almost completely by doing model trades, the project turned into a bit more work than I had planned for it as more than half of what I got in trades were in a horrible state.

That said, I did get most of the faction in one swoop and after a bit of hard modeling work, I had everything ready to go.

Except I couldn't really go anywhere with it because as any war gamer knows, you need some kind of transport system for an army.

That's a lot of CoC!

I've typically used Sabol foam trays carried around in a Battle Foam Pack Air case, but huge based models require specialty foam from Battle Foam, and those are pretty pricey - $23 per huge base.  If anyone knows about CoC, they know you will have at least 3 huge bases, and I ended up with 4 after all the trading was done.

I'm looking at almost $100 in foam just for the huge bases, then at roughly $8 per Sabol tray, I'm easily blowing $150 or more getting everything in foam for this faction.  Then I'm lugging the large pack air case plus an old Sabol Army Transport bag to hold my huge bases if I'm using them in my list pair.

There simply had to be a better way. Then the idea hit me...

Magnets!

I went to the local craft store and bought myself some bins that were the same length and width, but had different heights. I did some pre-measuring of each of my huge bases and my "floating" vectors to check heights.

Each bin is 15.5" x 11.5" and I ended up with 5 bins in total: 1x 8.3" tall, 2x 5.6" tall, and 2x 2.9" tall.  The bins were about $12 a piece, but more importantly I wouldn't ever have to buy more in the future. The only recurring cost for this system is going to be purchasing magnets for new models.

Securing the Models

Magnets don't work on plastic, so I needed to line the bottom of my bins with metal. My local big-box hardware store had 1 foot square steel sheet at about $5 per. Not too shabby.  The only problem was that I'd need to shave off some of the sheet to fit into the bottom of my bins. What's more is that while the overall top dimensions of the bins are the same, the bottoms are not.  

There was a bigger problem. I'm not particularly handy, and I don't have a ton of power tools.  What I do have however is my friend Ray.

This is Ray. Ray is handy. Be like Ray.

Ray is one of those guys who makes his own furniture - as a hobby...and the furniture actually looks good when he's done! He's got tools galore and was kind enough to help me out by cutting my metal for me. I had used a pair of metal snips to cut one sheet and it worked, but it didn't look great. Ray sanded that shit down for me and trimmed it up so it looked better. 

So now I had 5 sheets of steel cut to the right size for my bins. 

Mixing Plastic and Steel

Next up I just gotta stick my steel to my bins, should be easy right?

I tried superglue. That failed spectacularly. The steel pulled right off with a tiny bit of tugging. It worked well enough to hold if I didn't rumble it too much, which was good for a short term solution of carrying the CoC to play games locally. 

So next I decided to buy a two part epoxy that said it would work on metal and plastics.  So I put on my gloves, was really careful, sanded down parts of the steel where the super glue didn't take and weighted down my bins:

After 24 hours of curing....the steel peeled right off with just a little bit of force, just like the the superglue. 

At this point I was done trying to find some kind of glue or epoxy based solution. It was time for nuts and bolts. Luckily the bins I bought had the raised section in the middle where I could have the bolt-ends sit while not exceeding the lip of the base of the actual bin (ie. I won't scratch up any tables due to having bolts on the bottom of my bins). 

Construction Tips

One thing I learned: Drilling through steel sheet isn't great if you don't have special drill bits, which not being a handyman, I didn't have.  You can however put a thick nail through the steel pretty easily, which then lets the drill go through easily and drill through the plastic.  I only hammered my thumb once. Ray would be proud. Sorta. 

Because bolts take up model space, and my huge base solution is kind of tight, I elected to only use two bolts per bin rather than 4. I will see how well this holds up, and if I need to secure it more it's easy enough to mark where to put the holes, remove the plates, make the holes, and re-secure it all. 

That said, there's only a tiny bit of wiggle with the two corners secured as it is, so I believe this setup will work.  Here are my results:

Magnet Advice

I recommend buying strong rare earth magnets for this, stronger than what you'd usually buy if you're magnetizing jacks/beasts. Specifically N52 strength is preferred.  I've gotten some magnets off Amazon but the affordable ones there are generally the weaker kind, so I've preferred to get magnets for this from K&J Magnetics. I'm not affiliated with them at all, but I've used them for years and they deliver quality stuff. 

You can get away with cheaper magnets if you use multiple, and cheaper magnets work well for small based plastic models that don't require as much force. Amazon can help out here. 

I actually had quite a few magnets laying around from years gone by which reduced my magnet purchasing requirements a bit.

That said, once you've used the right magnets, everything stays very secure in the bins. I didn't take a picture, but I was able to turn the bin upside down with the models in it and not have any casualties. 

Carrying Solutions

The final bit that isn't finished yet for this is a bag to hold it all. Currently I use a set of straps I had for carrying a PC around to LAN parties to secure the bins and hold my dice bag + widgets.  This works but isn't exactly pretty.

I am lucky in that my wife is a quilter, and she's currently sewing up a bag to hold this in, complete with pockets, straps for easy carrying, and all the rest. I realize not everyone can do this or has the luxury.  The alternative was trying to find a piece of luggage or a transport/case for a sewing machine that would have the internal dimensions to hold my bins. With better planning up front (buy bins that fit in luggage more easily) this is probably more achievable, but again you're still spending a decent amount of money this way. It's still probably less than a equivalent sized Battle Foam bag + rack system, but it's a lot of work to find the right combo of bin + case. 

Costs and Benefits

I started this project thinking it'd be good long term going forward wargaming wise and would save me money. Did it? Yes, but partially because I've cheated.

I am saving a good bit of money and getting a custom case + transport system, but that's really only because my wife isn't charging for her labor to assemble the bag, Ray didn't charge me for cutting the metal to size, and I don' t have to pay myself for all the work I've done getting the bins setup.  I also didn't have to buy lots of my strongest magnets because I already had a bunch from when I played 40k/WHFB. 

I probably could have just spent the extra money up front and bought Battle Foam's Magna-Rack system and one of their cases. They're pretty damn expensive, and you still have to buy the magnets, but it's basically none of the work and it looks great.  My custom case will look as good if not better, but not everyone is married to a quilter with sewing equipment to make a custom bag. 

The real savings are in the fact that going forward for any new armies I ever pick up, I'm using magnets, not foam. 

Magnets can cost up to $0.50 per magnet of the right size/strength, so 100 models is $50 in magnets. Is there really a cost savings here?  I think so, but in hindsight, it's probably not much.

Typically $50 in foam is not going to store 100 models, especially if you're counting lots of bigger models (30mm to 50mm bases) which take up a lot of foam space, but still only require one strong magnet.   Huge bases (120mm) require multiple magnets per, but even then it's only like $2 in magnets as opposed to $22 for a foam tray. 

You can also use weaker magnets for small based plastic models, where the magnet costs are significantly cheaper, especially if you look around on Amazon where you can get 50 to 100 magnets of the right size for something like $15. 

The real savings comes in the fact that once you've bought+built your bins to transport the minis, you can use them with basically any model set you want. Compared to foam where you need to pluck out whatever kind of foam for your specific models. The other benefit is storing models that have long reach weapons or stick out oddly...like Inverters or Reciprocators. 

When it comes to storing models long term (ie. when I'm switched to another army), I can put some metal sheet in larger storage bins and just put my models into one decent sized bin. This is probably more efficient than what I have to do now to store foam trays for models. 

The other benefit is when it comes to going to tournaments. I can fit my two list pair onto a single baking sheet, which makes for a great tournament tray that securely holds everything. I've already attended one event this way and it has worked out great. The baking sheet was something like $5 and slips easily into my bag. 

Overall I'm pretty happy with how the project has come out and I've certainly saved some money going this route, but it's definitely a lot of work to get here.