Panel boxes

I have had a small group of people express interest in a winter snow painting workshop. It looks to me as if their is enough interest to do a workshop. I will get back to you again about that, if you are interested let me know. I am thinking January.

I intend to start writing on winter painting and equipment soon. However, I have a whole lot of art history I want to do and some of my own history too, I am not sure what comes next. I have ideas about what to write about, lots of them. I assume that at some time I will have uploaded everything I know about onto this blog and it will end. However I still have great swathes of subject matter I still want to write about.

Here is a panel box. Its purpose is to protect wet paintings from getting ruined while on painting trips. I have about six of them in different sizes. I make these myself but there are commercially made boxes that are lighter and probably as good. This box is many years old and probably predates the plastic ones available. But it is very tough. If I wanted another size that I didn't have, (this one is an 18 by 24 ) I would get out my table saw and make it. Here is a view of its interior.

It is made of luan plywood screwed with sheetrock screws to 1 by 4 pine sides. The top is hinged with a pair of small cabinet door hinges and held closed on the other side with a sash lock from a window. An eye hook will work for that too. The panels slide into grooves put into the sides with a table saw, here is a view of those. If you are not able to cut those on a table saw, you can build up the spacers by gluing and then nailing with fine brads small square mouldings also available at the lumberyard.


The whole affair is pretty rough and they take a beating being packed and unpacked, stuff gets piled on them and so they need to be rugged. I think of my panel boxes are a sort of specialized crate. The plastic ones would work for some people, but I don't think they would be tough enough for me. I killed several French Easels before moving to the Gloucester easel. I am rough on stuff, I use it every day and it all needs to be far more rugged than the weekend user would need.

You can make a box to hold several different sizes, for instance, I have a box that will hold any panel that is 14" long on one side, so it will hold an 11 by 14 but it will also hold a 14 by 18, I deliberately made the box deep enough for that.

I use the 3/8" hardboard to make my panels ( here is how to make panels ) and I recommend that you do also, but you need to decide if its that size or the 1/4" before you make those slots. It is good to leave a little play in there so you can get the panels in and out too. Some of your panels will be a little long, I don't think they grow but there seem always to be a few which are a little longer then they are supposed to be.