Well Christmas has come and gone and Santa brought me a present for my painting studio. This present turned out to be a Back 2 Base-ix Hobby Organiser in Acrylic.
If you have seen some past images of my painting workstation you will know that I have already started to build up my collection of desk and paint organisers from Back 2 Base-ix. These organisers come in either MDF or acrylic format. I prefer the acrylic versions but that’s just personal taste. The great thing with the acyclic versions is that when you order them, you can choose which colors the panels will be (you can have differing colored panels on the same stand). You can see in the pictures below, I like the black walls with the clear holder option.
There are quiet a variety of hobby organisers that you can select from. You can paint pot holders, tools holders, drawers to hold your bits and even painting miniature stands that hold the models for you. I got the paint holder. When selecting your paint holder you will need to select the type of paint pot you intend to put into it (the hole sizes differ depending on your selection) as well as whether you want a straight holder, a curved holder on an ‘end’ piece. Why the variety in shapes…. so you can build one of these:
When the package arrives, it came flat packed and disassembled. All the acrylic components came with the paper protector film still attached.
This particular hobby organiser is a Vallejo dropper pot holder. The parts are relatively simple and straight forward. You get the walls for the organiser, the paint pot holder and some screws. You will notice that there is no instructions included. To be honest, once you have built a few of these you really don’t need instructions, but for your first time it’s best to follow Back 2 Base-ix video tutorial on YouTube. Watching someone else build one of these is so much easier than trying to follow paper instructions. Here is their YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Back2Baseix
First thing to do is to peel off the protective paper on all the acyclic. Hope you have some long/tough nails. This bit can take a little time so make sure you have something on TV whilst you peel your fingers numb.
Aaah, once the protective paper is gone, your greeted with nice shiny acrylic.
As you can see below, the paper comes off in bits. Actually I should really be calling this protective Sticker. It’s not so bad that you need a dissolving agent to help peel this paper off, but it tends to break up near corners and requires just that little extra frustration and finger dexterity to get it all off.
Once all the protective paper is off, the easy building part starts.
Couple of screws later (5 minutes later) and I’m nearly done. The main structure is formed.
Finally the completed paint organiser.
And here it is holding my Vallejo paints. You can see the Games Workshop paint pot holder next to it.
And here is the rest of my paint holders. All form Back to Base-ix.
All in all I find Back 2 Base-ix products of the very best quality. I’ve moved house twice with these stands and brutalised them over the past year and they have not cracked or chipped at all. Having a clean, operational (and good looking) workstation really does inspire me to paint more often and paint faster (I can see where any of my paints are at all times).
