"best way to pack painted miniatures for moving?" Topic

In the wake of my husband's death, I'm packing the house up in preparation for moving 3 hours away to be closer to family. I'm looking at over 4 full books shelves of painted wargame miniatures on bases, some with pikes, that must be readied for transport. What is the best way to pack them? What kind of boxes should I be looking for (he had a few, but not enough, and I don't know what they're called to look for more).

At one point he was using rice crispies as packing material, but more recently started using toilet paper, but I don't know why.

In my experience, rice crispies won't work well, as the minis can still move around.

Toilet paper or similar works great, just use a small bit of tape to secure the loose end. One of the international painting services uses paper, and it works great.

Another of the international painting services uses small ziploc bags for 15mm figures, and to my surprise, this works great, too.

Madcybrarian, I'm sorry to hear of your loss.

Packing miniatures can be tricky, but I would recommend fiberfill, springy synthetic puffy stuff with a little more body to it than cotton wads. You could pack figures in to bags full of the stuff. For figures with pikes I'd probably put them in a box, laying the first line of figures over a layer of fiberfill, covering them with another layer, and then adding in the next layer of figures, and so forth.

My sincere condolences for your loss.

I've been shipping a lot of painted figures lately. I sold a collection of WW2 28mm figures.

I put a layer of bubble wrap, or newspaper if you don't have bubble wrap. Lay the paper flat 10 or so sheets thick.
You can put some toilet paper in between the figures then I use packing peanuts. Styrofoam or organic corn ones, whichever you prefer. If you have a plastic box, so much the better. Layer the peanuts so they cover the figures, then another layer of newspaper or bubble wrap. More figures with toilet paper and more peanuts.

Tape up tightly and mark fragile keep upright on the box in big block letters.

I'm very sorry to hear about your loss as well. You have my sincere condolences.

If you can keep them flat in boxes, instead of stacking them, that'd be best.

Pizza boxes are ideal for this, e.g. only permitting one level deep in terms of miniatures storage.

See if a local shop will sell some clean ones to you.

I like the smaller ones, since there's less of a chance of the middle getting squashed from above. However, if they have those plastic inserts to keep that from happening, that'll work as well, instead, for the larger ones.

They work good for dust-free storage too.

Make sure to label them, by type, if you know what the different units are.

I don't have any suggestions better than those above. Just wanted to offer my condolences as well.

If there is a local game store or club, you might try asking for help there.

My condolences on your loss.

If you need clean pizza style boxes (they work great, I swear by 'em) get them in bulk from Uline:

link

The 11 x 18 come in a variety of depths and are VERY strong. I stack mine up to 10 tall and no worries of crushing at all.

I would use box files for the pike and use small amounts of blu-tak on the bases to lock them down.

Also, if you can get them, shoe boxes used for ladies knee high boots are cheap and effective for mass storage of both figures and terrain. They are nearly twice as big as a box file, a little deeper and free!

If the bases are made of metal, use magnetic paper on the bottom of the box to hold them in place.

Otherwise, use styrofoam packing pellets or bubblewrap.

Best way is very carefully – we used bubble wrap and toilet paper and packed into small boxes but still ended up with the whole Napoleonic fleet wrecked. It was beautiful (until we moved). So be careful as well with the order that you pack things into boxes – in our case there was just a bit too much pressure on the masts etc.

If there was a next time I think I'd use bubble wrap, with expanded foam packaging to prevent movement and even smaller boxes to prevent layers of figures moving against each other.

Puffed rice cereal is the best material for packing miniatures. Just set the figures in the box and pour on top. I've used it for decades and never once had a figure damaged. By the cheap stuff in bulk at dollar stores. It is far less expensive than styrofoam and environmentally friendly too.

When you unpack, remove any dust with a can of compressed air used for cleaning keyboards.

Dear Madcybrarian

Most sorry to hear of your loss. My prayers and condolences are with you.

first off Let me tell you there is NO WAY you will avoid all damage. I used to move painted figures to and from conventins and made special slotted trays that the figure bases slid into and it locked them solidy. They never moved and I was carefull with the boxes the trays were in (they were positively locked too and the trays and boxes were made of sturdy 1/4" plywood. The simple torqueing and movement still knocked figures off sent pikes plying from hands etc.

Second, are you going to keep and game with these or eventually sell them off at a flea-market?

In either case though I would reccommend not going into a lot of expense, but simply get a supply of cardboard boxes from Staples or some other provider, Make sure they are of uniform height. Even the simple white Mailers will do for most miniatures. Then line up the stands in the bottom of the case and use 1" wide duct tape to cover the edges of the stands and tape them down to the base of the box. If you want to get fancy, you can take scrap cardboard and carefully measure the distance from the top of the taped base to the top of the box, draw out on the scrap cardboard a "U" with the two sides being the distance measured from the top of the stand to the top of the box. Crease along these to form the "U" Put these between the rows of troops in the bottom of the box as a posive hold-down when the box is closed.

That's about the best to do expeditiously without a lot of work.

ORRRRR if you're of a mind to. Forget the tape and "U"'s and simply get a hot-melt glue gun and a bunch of glue sticks. Take each stand and put about a dime sized dollop (or smaller if they are 15mm or smaller) on the base of the stand and press it into the bottom of the box. When you want to get them out of the box, simply pop off the stand with a screw-driver. The glue will come clean from the box and pull off the stand, or if the glue is on the stand, it can be taken off easily with a razor-blade paint scraper you can get at any Lowe's, Home Depot, or Hardware Store.

There are a number of ways to do this as others have discussed. The most poorly packed figures I receive are those that don't fill the space in the box with packing material. However you pack them, the contents should be protected from other contents. Not just vertically, but horizontally. Make sure that when the driver jams on brakes and the load lurches forward that the figures don't slam into one another. Fill the container however you pack it. (Cardboard dividers in large boxes to subdivide the space can really manage shifting around.)

If they are not individually based but are on large bases I use looped packing tape (Sticky side out) to stick the bases to the bottom of the box. I then use fiberfill pillow stuffing (Cheap at fabric stores) to fill the area. The tape keeps the bases seperated horizontally while allowing them to move vertically a little. The fiberfill keeps them from moving too much vertically.

The net effect is that figures can move very slightly to absorb big shocks to the box but they are well cusioned and will not run into each other.

This works best for 6, 10 and 15mm figures where the tape adhesive is strong enough to keep the figures in place.

I just shipped 150 or so Nappies 28mms. I put packing peanuts on anything spikey until they were covered then wrapped them in bubble wrap. Not one figure was damaged in shipping.