Hey Gunpla Guys & Girls!
I finally got around to tidying up my workspace this past week while I was in between reviews, and one of the things I wanted to do was save space. As we all know, for most of us space is a premium! I'm lucky enough to have a dedicated Office/Hobby Room but still need to save space where I can. One thing that was taking up major footage was the big foam box I was stabbing my skewers into when painting! It was also breaking down after a few years of use...
So in that sense, I bring to you my little Tutorial on making your own version of the Mr. Hobby (GSI CREOS) “Mr Paint Station”. If you would rather buy one, go ahead, but its actually a really simple design and easy to make.
Above is the one you can buy; below is my DIY version, which is roughly the same (minus the branded cardboard edging...and ‘machine-cut’ even inserts lol)
To start, you'll need the following Tools and Materials:
Pencil/Marker
Ruler
Box cutter/knife
Tape
Craft glue
Cardboard (how much depends on how big/many you want to make)
I was lucky enough to find these boxes not needed at work, but check your local hardware/supermarket etc... They usually crush and recycle these so a good chance to grab them for free!
The cardboard you want is thick for packaging/postal kind of stuff - it has bigger holes in between the sheeting so your paint sticks can sit in them.
Ok so, first thing: grab your pencil, ruler, and a sheet of the cardboard. For mine I wanted 2 stations, as that would hold almost a full HG kit painted or an RG etc... I measured out to make mine 33Cm long x 24CM wide. Depth is IMPORTANT!!! Because, if you make it too shallow the box will fall over! In light of that, I made mine roughly 7CM deep.
Next up, what you need to do is cut out the pieces as shown above. You
should have a ‘base piece’ (otherwise the sticks will just fall through your box),
2 ‘sides’, and 2 ‘ends’. I made everything twice since I was making 2 boxes.
Once you have your bits measured and cut, take some sticky tape and leaving
a tiny gap between the pieces (to allow for movement when folding together)
tape them together.
After this step you need to then fold them (tape on outside) up and join at the corners and all around so you have a box.
I went round a few times with tape to make sure this was secure, but you'll do that again later to secure it all together.
Next up we need to make the inserts. These will hold the actual
skewers/sticks. So, measure the width and height of the pieces (lined up with
top of box) and start cutting!!! This will be the most tedious part as you'll need
a lot to fill the box end to end. Keep that in mind that when making your
boxes, the bigger they are, the more you need to cut.
After a while, it should look like this! I added a couple more to this one, and once it was sandwiched in I taped it round again, and then laid a thin edge of tape over each side to stop the cardboard pulling out.
There you go! DIY paint stick holder for basically nothing as most of you will
have access to this stuff for free or for a relatively cheap price.
Thanks for reading and take care during this interesting time we live in,
Keep Building!
Mark :)
(Editing by Miguel and Zeta)
