Ken
Pair
I found that I really don’t like bird cages for traveling with chips. They work really well around the house but most of the games where my chips get used are held somewhere else. The bird cages rattle in the car and sometimes tip over on quick starts/stops.
I previously made Pelican case smaller cases for small games that hold either:
- 400 chips in a Pelican 1200 case
- 900 chips in a Pelican 1400 case (also fits Apache 2800)
I also got a request to see if an Apache 3800 case would be usable. I found I could fit eight of my special 180 chip cases to hold a total of 1440 chips.
All of these use custom designed chip trays that stack the chips upright so they don’t rattle. The chip trays are 3d printed. I made the models available online in previous posts. They are not difficult to load but aren’t the chip trays everyone is used to so some people may not like them. I like the usual trays a little better as well.
I went back to looking at the Apache 3800 case as they were on sale at Harbor Freight and are often on sale. They are a lot less expensive than Pelican and more than good enough for my purposes.
First, how many chips can fit in an Apache 3800 in normal chip racks?
From quick testing it looks like eight racks can fit on their side stacked across the bottom of the case. I could also put a second stack right on top of that.
However, how do you get a stack of eight chip trays out easily? It is doable but there is going to be a mess of chips more frequently than I desire.
I did some investigation and found that if I stack just TWO trays then put another one no upside down I can grab it with one hand and easily maneuver it without spilling. That would be the basic “unit” I will work with. I could put three of these units across but then there is no space to get your fingers to grab them.
However, the upside down top tray does not need the cutout to stack on another tray so what if I just cut that off. That makes that upside down tray 10mm shorter. When you do that for all three “units” across that is enough for fingers.
Note: the upside down tray needs to have the same barrel spacing as the trays or it won’t sit cleanly on the chips. Or it could just be an empty box as it just is holding the chips in the rack while you lift them in and out of the case.
Lastly, I 3d printed an insert that goes in the bottom of the case that holds three units top and three units bottom. This was trickier than anticipated as there is not really a gold standard for chip tray size especially when the critical measurement is two trays stacked with an upside down un-stackable tray on top. I found out I had enough differences in my chip trays that the same insert would either be too loose on one rack or too tight on the other. For my purposes that was ok as I just use one type for one set and the other type for the other set as they were printed specifically for each set anyway. So I have five total cases now using two different inserts that differ only on the spacing of the uprights. The inserts are too big to print in one piece so that have dovetail interlocks to hold them together. The inserts could be made of wood cut and glued if you have some woodworking skills.
As a bonus for one of the sets I printed two trays that take the place of one “unit” reducing the capacity to 1000 chips. This insert holds two setups of cards in cases I created as well as dealer buttons and table / seat draw cards in their own case.
The card cases are 3d printed but use SOSS brass hinges for a way better feel than the usual plastic 3d printed hinges and strong magnets embedded for closure rather than plastic latches. I made a lot of these and put two in the Tourney 1 box and another six in its own Pelican case with insert for cards.
The table / seat draw cards are laser engraved anodized aluminum plates that are stored in a very similar case to the card case.
I made labels for the front and top also 3d printed to replace the generic blank labels that came on the case.
Then I continued until I had a total of five cases of chips.
