Picked up a 4-pack of Plano 3700 trays. The horizontal dividers are fixed but from there they're pretty adjustable. I'm interested in three factions (Resistance, Rebel, Scum) so one tray per faction plus one for the common stuff seems to be working out okay. Only rub is no room for larger ships, of which I have a couple. I still need to work something. A Battle Foam (or whatever it's called) case for just 2-3 ships seems a bit overkill. We'll see.

I have a 1.5" binder with 9-pocket card pages that's doing quite well holding all the cards.

These are the ships I don't have a solution for.

On Edit: yeah, just noticed the base card for the Firespray is backwards. Oops.

Some boxes I found do not have the 3rd horizontal row but the same spacing and I can fit the YT and Firespray in them. Do not own a bomber so unsure on it's fit. The vertical removable dividers for the row are basically twice as long. You could try snipping away part of a horizontal row to make room. In your Scum box the wall dividing 2 dial sections and the debris would be a good spot. My boxes are 14"x8.5" for reference and a YT fits in 4 "squares".

4 hours ago, Spinland said:

Only rub is no room for larger ships, of which I have a couple. I still need to work something. A Battle Foam (or whatever it's called) case for just 2-3 ships seems a bit overkill.

Battle Foam is certainly overkill. Let me instead throw out a plug for the glorious pastime of case modding . 😁 I use Plano 5231s, and have learned through the years that just about any of the fixed bits can be pretty easily cut or clipped out. Don’t be shy, and yes, it can be a pain cutting the vertical bits low to the case’s floor. Just keep some hot glue and extra case material on hand in case you need to patch things up.

I’m not as familiar with the Plano 3700s, but I bet you can get at least the Falcon and Firespray in there with some mild cutting. They’re really not that big once they’re laying down.

The Bomber is gonna be trickier. In my 5231, I laid the Bomber on its side and cut a hole in the floor of the top section to admit its fin. To do that in the 3700, you’d probably have to construct a small “hat” out of case material and glue it on top, over the fin sticking out. (I ended up having to do just that for my Lancer, which fits quite nicely in the 5231’s top section, save for its turret.)

Interesting! I'm certainly not afraid to do some hacking on them; what tools have you found to be best for the job?

Removing Plano Dividers (forum link)

1 hour ago, Spinland said:

Removing Plano Dividers (forum link)

That’s cool. I didn’t think to go looking for info with Plano itself...

2 hours ago, Spinland said:

Interesting! I'm certainly not afraid to do some hacking on them; what tools have you found to be best for the job?

I haven’t made a big effort with picking good tools, tbh. I have an old folding knife that’s useful for big downward cuts; I also just use my hobby X-Acto #2 for finer work. I also use plain scissors for cutting the removable dividers, which are often needed (alongside hot glue) for plugging random gaps. I’m keen on thoughts about a Dremel, but keep never getting around to it.

Oh yeah, one last detail: every once and again I’ll get a surface in my Plano that doesn’t like the hot glue for some reason. It’s only ever happened a couple times, but it was useful to keep some superglue around for that.

Decided to try this on a smaller Plano I'm not using for anything (forget the number, it has 16 bins when all the dividers are in). Tried with a carpet knife and met with more resistance from the plastic than I anticipated so stopped before I bork something. I have a Dremel tool so intend to drag that out next and try my hand at it. Worst case I wreck an unused Plano. If it works out, that tray can hold the two ships I think I'll actually use (YT and Firespray) and the Resistance Bomber can look pretty on my gaming shelf. It was a gift, from my eldest daughter's surplus, and not something I actually expect I'll put in a list.

The Firespray would fit neatly in a 2x2 spot but the YT is going to need half the container because it's too long to fit in the smaller space.

I've modified a few Plano and Stanley cases with nothing more sophisticated than a box cutter. It's an effort to get the positioning right sometimes, but it works.

The big problem with the StarFortress (the Resistance Bomber) is the wings at the front. They're just long enough to make it near impossible to fit in any conventional cases. I actually had to slice the tips of the wings off and re-glue them at a shorter length.

56 minutes ago, Spinland said:

I have a Dremel tool so intend to drag that out next and try my hand at it. Worst case I wreck an unused Plano

A buffing pad works well instead of sanding drums for rough edges. The Dremel spins fast enough to almost melt the plastic. I found this out the hard way......

I went industrial on my collection (one box per faction). 1 box per faction seems to be enough for now.

You're the 2nd guy i've seen, who keeps the plastic 'covers' for the ships, and stores them IN those boxes..

I've been using Plano boxes for years. Decades, actually.

Plano makes many versions of their trays, without multiple configurations of dividers, including none - that is, the entire tray is one single, open compartment.

3700 is four rows built-in, with slots for dividers to segment these further.

3750 is two, slightly thinner rows in the upper half (the hinge side), and one large row for the lower half, which can also be divided into similar "double sized" compartments.

3707 is one open compartment - no dividers at all.

They also have some in the 37xx series that are the same legth & width, but taller/deeper - not quite twice as much. These can store a ship up to TIE fighter size upright, on its base, with one peg. These take up a lot more space, obviously, but it's really, really nice to be able to pull a ship out of the case ready-to-play. Saves lots of setup time for me.

3730 is basically the same as a normal 3700 - four rows that can be further divided (but again, taller). I usually divide a row into four compartments that each hold a pair of ships.

3780 is odd. It has four rows, but they're only 5/8 of the compartment long, ending in a fixed divider that goes from hinge side to latch side. The rest of the length has dividers that can continue the four rows in line, or you an remove them all to make the whole right side into one big compartment. If you keep just the middle one, each half can fit something the size of a YT-1300.

3731 is again one big, open compartment. I've used these a lot in the past to store bigger 40k models like tanks or monsters, surrounded by pieces of foam.

FYI not all of these are carried in all stores. The 3750's I've only ever found in Wal-Mart, and I think I ordered a case of the big open-compartment ones from Cabella's online. Shop around.

Thanks for all the great ideas! Going to be noting those model numbers for future reference.

Took my Dremel tool to the smaller Plano I wanted to use for the larger ships. Given I'm only looking to store the YT and the Firespray it came out well, I'm thinking. It's just tall enough to fit the bases and cardboard (which also won't fit in the main containers). I'm pleased.

You can buy direct at www.planomolding.com I am lucky enough to have relatives living near Plano IL. I visit the outlet store almost every time I am up there. They have much deeper boxes in their fishing section that work well for storage.

43 minutes ago, Spinland said:

Took my Dremel tool to the smaller Plano I wanted to use for the larger ships. Given I'm only looking to store the YT and the Firespray it came out well, I'm thinking. It's just tall enough to fit the bases and cardboard (which also won't fit in the main containers). I'm pleased.

You have taken your first step on a grander journey. 😁

20 minutes ago, Wolfshead said:

You can buy direct at www.planomolding.com I am lucky enough to have relatives living near Plano IL. I visit the outlet store almost every time I am up there. They have much deeper boxes in their fishing section that work well for storage.

I never thought of going to Plano IL and checking out an outlet store. 😮 Once this blasted Coronatime is over, I’ll have to try that...

4 hours ago, codytx2 said:

A buffing pad works well instead of sanding drums for rough edges. The Dremel spins fast enough to almost melt the plastic. I found this out the hard way......

Good tip. I ended up using a polishing brush wheel for cleanup; worked almost like a weed whacker.

Here is a stock Plano that will fit some of the ships.

Even fits the slightly larger original Falcon.

Here is the label (sorry about the rotation).

Note, I don't store mine this way, but I had the Plano boxes on hand.

Thanks for that, and the picture of the label is very useful. I've found that Plano's web site and their Amazon page aren't very useful to me. Even if I have a picture of a specific type of box in mind, I never seem to be able to browse to it using their interfaces; lots of stuff but not what I'm looking for. Do a search for a specific part number, however, and there it is.

Never even knew there was a town called plano..

2 hours ago, LTuser said:

Never even knew there was a town called plano..

There's more than one, because I thought the company was from Plano, Texas 😜

I love the 3700 trays. They work almost perfectly except for the weirdly shaped ships like the Lambda, Upsilon, Resistance Bomber and Ghost, etc.

I use a Plano 732 tackle box as the main storage solution in which all my weird ships and some trays go.

Then I have a Plano 728 to carry around the 5-6 lists I am having the most fun with at the moment.

Then I have 4-5 other 3700 series tackle boxes for the other factions and my "tourney tackle box" in a big blue ikea bag.

It's hard to tell how deep it is from the photo, but I think the one in the pic from @Wolfshead is a 3750 as I described above.

Also, I wouldn't dismiss the idea of doing a little custom cutting to get the perfect fit. I just wanted to point out that different models might save you the trouble, or at least give you different starting points to work from.

One other good thing about the Plano 3700's is that it's become a sort of standard. You can find knock-off brands that are the same size, and there are hard and soft sided bags (both official and otherwise) made to carry multiple trays.

I'm at the point now where if I have a model that doesn't fit in a Plano tray, I don't know what to do with it 😛

25 minutes ago, Hatemonger said:

It's hard to tell how deep it is from the photo, but I think the one in the pic from @Wolfshead is a 3750 as I described above.

You would be correct, they are the "standard" 37XX depth.

Here is the Plano I use for multiple transport.

Sorry, don't have the exact model as I have had these a while. With 1.0, I could fit the dials in the trays and have dials and ship tokens all together. Sadly 2.0 dials no longer fit, so it is just the ship tokens, dice and extra markers. The two smaller trays hold all the focus, force, etc markers that don't fit in my 3D printed table box. The bottom tray is holding all the smaller pieces for HOTAC

I like cutting the plastic mold out of the square and then put them in Stanley's

https://imgur.com/a/1bBKeHE