A Little Back Story

I’ve been painting miniatures for a few years now. It started with  RPG characters and villains then moved to painting the minis for my board games as more and more board games are now including minis with their games. When starting out I used artist acrylic paints I had a who bowling ball bag filled with paints from my college art classes. This was fine up until last month. I was curious and purchased some Vallejo paints, just eight, enough to paint my Han Solo and Rebel Saboteurs minis for Star Wars Imperial Assault. I’ve been converted. The quality of the paint, ease of application and the minimal waste due to the dropper bottles was all steps above my artist paint. Let me also focus on that, artist paints, I just wanted to note that I did not use craft paints, I painted with the more expensive artist grade paints for years. Even those higher end paints would still have colors within the same brand that had course grit pigments that would leave an undesirably thick layer that would quickly cover up all the fine details of the miniature.

I Know Somewhere There’s a Desk Under All This Clutter

Another great thing about bottles of miniatures paint is the fairly standardize sizes. It was time for a organization solution.

Requirements:

• Needs to be wall mountable to keep it off my work space.
• Should be able to fit multiple brands of paint.
• Large storage capacity (at least 60 bottles).
• Storage bins for sandpaper, razors, putty etc. etc.
• Reasonably compact size that can be laser cut from 18″x12″x1/4″ Plywood.

I saw a number of different options for hobby paint racks online  while surfing around Pinterest and combined a few ideas into one, drafted it up and got to cutting. Here’s the result:

After Adding a few paint supplies to it we can see how items fit.

I found that I’d use the lowest open storage area for miniatures in progress. Now I can really keep my work desk clear of clutter. The slide out shelf makes access to the paints on the top row easy to get to. The side lock tabs work well in keeping the shelf locked in preventing any possibility of a big mess of paint bottles on my desk if I were to accidentally pull the drawer out.

For the time being I’ll just leave the paint rack on my lower desk shelf. I’ll still bind it to the wall using of the wall screws slots just to make sure I don’t tip the whole thing over when I’m to lazy to get up from my chair while reaching for a color.