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so ive been sitting on about 6 of these for a year or so and i cant figure out what to do with them.
i thought they would be cool to use to make buildings but the round holes are really throwing me off.
any suggestions on how to fix them up and make them usable??



the place i work has a crate shop so i also have access to tons of 2x4s and 3/4 inch plywood.
any ideas on how to make use of this to fill a table?

The simple solution is to.stick plasticard to.the inside and turn it upside down. You could then paint it all as textured metal or paint the recessed circles as Windows.

thanks flinty, thats definitely what i had in mind when i bought them but for some reason the idea of the round windows is driving me crazy.
silly i know...

Then use a knife and make them rectangular.

That plastic will not cut well.

You'd be far better off covering them with some ribbed eva shelf liner as siding:



You may have to put a single piece of card across all the windows first to keep the circles from distorting the shelf lining.

Personally I'd put the ribs vertical, paint it and then weather the crap out of it. Dark brown with a sponge to make chips, lots of washes. Basically instead of buildings, they're strange industrial platforms you can't really get inside. I guess you could make doors and whatever and make them buildings.

I like the idea of round windows. Very future/nautical. Would take some work, but maybe use them as wrecked hull sections of a future space cruise ship.

Get yourself a saw and cut out the magenta line from the main basket. Cut out the blue lines for windows. Stick on some plasticard for details. See image below:



(Expected) finished product:

No I don't think you're crazy at all. Nothing irks me more (in gaming terrain) than when something I've worked on for hours just turns out looking like a painted upside down crate, instead of the bunker or whatever I had imagined.

For what I'm thinking you're going to need a jig-saw and a hot glue gun.

I'm thinking build up the corners with ply into seriously heavy balustrades obscuring the circles to either side of the corners all the way up. Then maybe add a fronticpiece in ply for a main door frame built up into a solid blast door.

Leave some few circles unobscured for windows, use a couple for outlets for large pipes or build a lean-to room off one side or make a few circles into armoured gun emplacements.

I'm suggesting mostly that you use the crate as a base but build the heck out of it with ply and additional materials, hide most of the circles and use a select few in various ways on each side.
A thin ply board base would help stabilise the thing too.

Thanks guys.
Unfortunately chamberlain is right and this plastic is super hard to cut.

Flip it upside down, put colored cellophane on the inside across the holes, then set one of those LED tea lights inside. Instant glowing power generators.

You'll need one of these to not kill yourself.

Add some bars or woven wire to the holes and turn in into a prison!



That's what I would do. And an occasional window like this:



Perhaps even with some knitted blankets hanging out of it.

If you're going for a more scifi look, I'd still give it a prison look, but with a couple of large tentacles coming out of it, like some kind of weird experiment gone wrong: