...of card modeling is figuring out how to transport them when the need arises. I'm entering some of my models in the local IPMS chapter's annual contest (
Twin City Aero Historians - NordicCon 2010 next Saturday and although the contest site is only a half-hour's drive from my home, I can't just throw the models in the car and go.
So I wound up fashioning boxes with cradles for three of the models, and here are the photos. The boxes are the ones that reams of copying paper come in (I get them at work) and I cut down a couple of other boxes to get the cardboard to make the cradles.
The solar arrays on the ATV were longer than the standard box, though, so I cut the end off one box, cut another box in half and then grafted the two boxes together to make one long box.
Once I got the cradles glued in, I punched holes near the edges of the openings the models go in so I could thread pipe cleaners through them. The pipe cleaners provide a nice and low-stress way of securing the models during transport.
Since the 1/96th-scale Orion and Orion Deep Space Vehicle both had built-in ways to carry them (the holes for the docking tube that joins them) I just glued extra sections of tube to a box, then stuck the models on the tubes.
I'll take an extra box to carry all the stands, the removable solar arrays and my emergency repair kit (X-acto knife, super glue, accelerator, Sharpie, etc.).
All I can say is thank goodness for the hot-glue gun. And I'm glad the contest only comes once a year.
My 1/96th-scale Aries I-X -- which is over 40 inches tall -- will be wrapped with bubble wrap and then placed in a big mailing tube.