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I want to spend the money that I have on buying good miniatures, rather than on accessories such as movement trays. As a consequence I have spent a lot of time trying to work out how to cheaply make movement trays for my magnetised miniatures and have come up with (what I think) is a pretty good solution which I wanted to share below. In doing all of this I have tried to avoid using tools other than those that most people will have in their garden shed. You should be able to make more movement trays than you will know what to do with for under $10.

What you will need is:
- A sheet of thin MDF (will cost less than $4 for a very large sheet)
- A olive oil tin (they are made from thin steel) – these are pretty easy to get for free if you just ask your friends/family as most people throw them in the garbage after they finish the oil.
- Some PVA/wood glue
- Gardening gloves
- Some pruning shears/tin snips/heavy duty strong scissors
- Wood saw
- Hammer
- Some small rare earth magnets (these can been bought very cheaply on ebay – a few dollars for 50) and some superglue
- Some sand
- Some paint
- A computer/printer

The steps are as follows:
1. Design the footprint for your unit in word using the tables function. Add 4 mm around the table, I play ogres and so a 2 x 3 unit will be 128 x 88 mm. Print this out and then cut it out. This step allows you to avoid having to be concerned about the dimension, having to draw right angles perfectly and a whole heap of measuring.
2. Cut into the old tin and flatten it out (see picture 1 below). The tin is very thin and I found that I could cut it with pruning shears reasonably easily (without it having an effect on the shears). If you have tin snips they would make this job easier. The tin will be oily and will need cleaning with detergent/water. Make sure that you put gardening gloves on when you are cutting the metal as it is sharp. Or you could do what I did, which was cut my hand open and then put the gardening gloves on. Hammer out the tin until it is relatively flat.
3. Trace out the foot print from step 1 onto the MDF and onto the tin, and then cut it out using a saw and shears respectively. Flatten out the tin if it has distorted. Make sure that after cutting the wood that your regiment will fit neatly on top with only a slight amount of MDF sticks out around the sides – the 4 mm that you add in step 1 allows you to shave some further wood off if needed.
4. Line up the two pieces. You want the tin to be slightly smaller than the piece of MDF and so it may need to be trimmed.
5. Glue the two pieces together using ample PVA glue.
6. When it is dried put wood glue around the sides of the combined sheet and then stick it in the sand. This will make it look rough and also add another layer of protection by ensuring that any tin than may be sticking out will be covered.
7. Paint with whatever you want. I just used cheap acrylic paint. Having paint on it will protect the metal from rusting (see picture 2 below)
8. Add the rare earth magnets to the bottom of your miniature using the superglue (see picture 3 below). Polarity will not matter (however I tend to like to have mine all the one way so that I can then use the magnets to stick moveable pieces on top of my miniatures).
Your miniatures will now hold on to the sheet and you can use it as a movement tray (see picture 4). You don’t need a border for the tray to hold them in place and they can traverse anything (even tissue boxes) without fear (see picture 5).

The advantage of the above method is:
- It is dirt cheap and doesn’t require equipment beyond what you will probably already have at home.
- You can custom make whatever size tray you want
- As the trays are just steel (rather than sheet magnets) you don’t have to worry about polarity (regardless of the polarity of the magnets on the base of your miniature they will stick).

Hope that you find this useful.