The final big part of sorting out a mobile painting solution is the case, this turns out to be the trickiest part of them all, I have seen a number of different solutions and none of them seemed to meet all of the requirements I had, straight from the shop, after a lot of deliberation I went for The Paint Chest by Frontier War Gaming
I wanted to be able to carry absolutely everything I need for a single paint trip in a single box, which when I laid everything out meant I could not go for the smaller but awesome looking “The Paint Case”, I know some people can do minimalist painting solution but I want this to be my main painting box, also I tend to carry group equipment.
Looks good sitting on a desk
The case itself is built nice and strongly. There is a bit of wobble in how it is put together on the doors, but after having a look it the quality hinges I realised it’s impossible to do anything about that, given distance from fulcrum and that kind of thing.
The wood is a good solid one that doesn’t show any weakness.
The hinges are solid metal, metal clasps, good solid construction all round.
The box itself feels like it is laser cut. The drawer fittings when you first start using them feel a little bit rough. But that is only the nature of its construction, once you get the hang of them, they all fit perfectly and don’t rattle.
There are notable slight differences in height between the different spaces for draws, with the top draw on each vertical column actually having a bit more space, I save those four areas for when I need a little bit more height (say for contrast paints).
The wet palette itself is a strange mix. The actual palette itself is excellent. One of the few with an airtight seal. couldn’t recommend it more, so it was a bit strange that they went a bit low quality after that, the foam feels low density and cheap. In fact, I went and swapped out the foam with an existing piece I had from another brand. The same is true for the actual paper. As you can see from the pictures. It’s a good deal more transparent. It’s totally serviceable though, I am at the stage of painting where I am not the best painter in the world. So it doesn’t make that much of a difference to me. But on hot days, it wants to curl up far faster than the competition.
There is additional varieties of drawers that you can buy including a good solid metal plate version. That’s pretty useful for miniatures and stuff with magnets. I swapped out a couple of drawers for those and also altered my handles to have magnets in them to make use of this
The actual box versions of the draws do come with dividers but I’ve ended up not using those. The boxes themselves aren’t really so big that you need to do dividers but it’s nice that they are supplied.
When I take the box to Bad Moon Café of all of the items that I take, the case itself is the one that is asked about the most, so it seems there are not many good competitors out there, There are a lot of home brew versions and everyone’s got their opinion but this does seem to be the very best case out in the market.