ECW project - The Movement Trays

Good Morning All on this fine Spring morning

Rather fortunately I am on holiday and aside from the various jobs around the house for Mrs Shed I have been busy finishing off my ECW Army. In this post I am reporting on the movement trays.

As you will be aware all of the figures I have been painting are mounted individually on 25mm Washers for Infantry and 50x25 bases for the cavalry. Rather than push these around the table in singles I have spent rather a lot of money on movement trays.

These have all been purchased from Warbases who I have to say offer great prices and excellent service. My orders have all arrived within 48 hours of placement.

There website can be found here

http://war-bases.co.uk/

My original intention was to mount the figures using magnets to the bases so I purchased the trays with the ready made holes. I have still to fit the magnets but given many of the figures now fit snugly in the trays I'll probably not bother.

The trays themselves are mdf and so need treating with a primer before any further work can be done. I used the Halfords grey primer on all the trays.

Once the primer was dry it was a case of applying pva glue to various parts of the trays trying to avoid glue seepage into the round holes. To the glue I sprinkled sand and ballast shaking off the excess.

As part of a test run I started painting the tray with the same emulsion tester pot I used for the bases of the figures. This was problematic as paint coverage was poor and the paint started to seep into the figure slots. This wasn't going to work.

Fortunately help was on hand from the Halfords Camo range - their dark Matt brown.

This not only gives a good clean finish but also takes considerably less time than painting.


With the trays dry I dry brushed on some lighter browns.

Before applying the static grass I turned my attention to the tray edges. These were firstly sanded down using a rasp and then tidied up with a black permanent marker. Much quicker and cleaner than the equivalent black paint job.

All that was required then was to add the static grass and bobs your uncle...

All the units are now based...

Just need to turn my attention to the Commanders and the standards of the various units..

Until next time