By Assistant Doc Michael Miller

Having used Games Workshop's movement trays for many years (out of the packet and having converted them), I decided to look for an alternative to their plastic trays. I personally found GW's trays difficult to pick up (when fully loaded with a unit of figures) as the edges are very thin (for my clumsy fingers). The edges also don't leave much room for decoration.

After looking around, I finally settled on Bass wood (Balsa wood can be used as an alternative). Bass wood is a little denser than Balsa, both can be purchased in a variety of thickness' and lengths.

In this example, I'll build a tray for a unit of 5 Ogres (40mm bases). Firstly, the tray's components:

1 x strip of 1/8" x 2" x 24" basswood (base).
1 x strip of 1/8" x 1/4" x 24" basswood (edges).

Above will be more than enough.

1. Measure the figures bases (with the unit ranked together) or use spare bases. FWIW, I add 1mm to each of the measurements to allow for paint thickness, human error, etc.

2. Add 1/2" to the above measurement for the Bass wood edges. These will be the edges of the movement tray.

3. Cut the base to size. Basswood can be cut using a sharp modelling knife or modellers hand-saw.

NOTE: Always measure TWICE, cut ONCE.

4. The Bass wood edges are now cut to size to fit on top of the base. Cut the longer sides to the same length as the base, the shorter edges are cut to fit inside the longer edges.

5. After the base and edges have been cut to size, glue (I use PVA glue) the edges to the base. The edges are attached to the top of the base (hence the extra 1/2" added around the figures bases in step 2). I then use small clamps to hold the pieces in place until the glue has dried.

5. The whole tray is then sanded with fine sandpaper. I purposely sand all the tray's "sharp" outer edges to allow easier gluing of the next stage. The bottom of the base is also sanded to allow it to slide easier across the tabletop.

6. When dry, all of the trays outer edges have fine sand glued to them (again using PVA glue). At this stage, you could just paint the tray and glue static grass to the edges. I prefer to add items of scenery such as rocks, stones, plastic mushrooms, leaves, etc.

7. Once all the parts have completely dried, I spray the whole base (excluding the bottom) with Games Workshop's Chaos Black. FWIW, I don't paint the bottom of the tray to allow the wood to breathe, thus helping to avoid the wood warping. So far, I've not had any problems whilst using Bass wood but its always better to be safe than sorry.

8. Once the black undercoat has dried, the edges can be painted in the colours of your choice.

A couple of worthless points of interest.

1. As each units base edges are 1/2" wide, units can be ranked up on the tabletop with their movement trays touching, thus ensuring all your units are always 1" apart.

2. The edges of the movement tray are the same height (1/8") as Games Workshop's plastic bases.