A Box

Yes, a box, and I made it.
(NB 9 Dec update below on how it turned out)
After such a long gap since the last post, and I've made a box?
Well, I guess a home made box is fair enough, it's not easy to get hold of boxes...

Here's a clue: it's roughly 53cm x 37cm x 13(?)cm, which I'm hoping will pass muster as carry-on luggage for most airlines eg. Finnair, for instance if I want to take a model or Nativity scene to Finland in the near future. Which I will, because I have had various generosities which it'd be appropriate to repay in this way.

It's made out of a mixture of wood and hardboard, therefore light but sturdy. It should X-ray okay, and I'd like to avoid having to open it up. Some of the construction is a bit crude - I've certainly been slopping on the glue. And I've mainly been using things I had available, hence that clip at the front with a lock. The lock is completely redundant, but I needed five clips and that's what I had. I'll also be using luggage straps to hold the box together.

I've been thinking through the various stages of getting on and off board an aeroplane, and I think any fragile contents will be reasonably safe while the box is packed into the overhead locker. I may not be popular carrying it around in this horizontal position, I'll just have to be careful. I'm a little apprehensive about the shaking it could get while being shunted down the conveyor belt through the X-ray scanner. And then there'll be what I hope will only be bemusement as the operator stares at the screen wondering what the hell they're looking at.

It's not quite finished. I'm going to tidy up the edges with duck tape. And I'll be adding some fixtures inside to position the models or other types of content, and also of course plenty of padding. I fully expect some bits and pieces to come adrift, and to have to stick them back into position afterwards, for certain types of model. Like biplanes. But until I use it I won't know if this happens to an acceptable level or not.

I wonder about my sanity sometimes... :)

9 Dec 2018 - The End of the Story

I'm glad to say all went well, with the project it was actually built for. As you will see in the pic below, things packed in okay, the main pieces the two 1:72 flying boats firmly positioned across the middle. I had stuck some v-shaped pieces of wood to the bottom, for the two boats to nestle in, with some insulation material in between. The planes were each held down by just two rubber bands. The clips on the outside turned out to be very solid and I only used one strap for insurance.

The packages around the outside contained vehicles and figures and the two model cradles which featured in the scene, which was an imaginary shoreside at a supposed flying boat base in somewhere like Florida, with concrete hardstanding and a section of slipway. See the next article for all that :)

The security people at Gatwick gave it its own ride along the conveyor belt and there was no fuss there.

The strength of the box was never tested as it happened, but I think it could have withstood other cases being placed on top, which is what I expected. But having got on the Norwegian Airlines 787 early on, I found to my dismay that the overhead luggage locker would naturally turn its contents upside down when it closed. Thankfully an eagle eyed stewardess spotted my hesitation and took it away somewhere where it would stay flat. Well, considering I'd turned the planes over during construction a few times, maybe they'd have stayed intact, but I'm very glad to have avoided the risk. In the end, I only found one wire which had detached at one end, part of the rigging on a top wing, so it was all pretty miraculous. Will I ever use the box again? Maybe, although I'm not sure models in larger scales would fit inside. But no regrets, even if it never gets used in this fashion again.