Burn In Designs Paint Rack Review

 For the longest time I have been shopping for a good paint rack to store my huge collection of hobby paints. I went with one of the Rubbermaid plastic storage bins that have multiple compartments to store your things. While this was a good solution to storage, I still ran into problems with easily accessing my paints. I just happen to run into a small laser cutting company named Burn In Designs. If you know me well, you'll know I like to support small companies that do hobby stuff. So after seeing their Facebook page full of laser cut awesomeness, I went ahead and ordered their paint rack that holds 50 paints in the standard wood. Here is the finished product on my desk.

Now for a review. Ordering from Burn In Designs is a bit more complicated in the sense that you have to email the company to request an order. Sure it's different but after using Etsy.com to sell  and then using Paypal for transactions myself, your profit margin takes a hit. So their method doesn't bother me at all. So you'll just have to have faith and trust them that you'll get your item(you know, the old fashion approach to business). Shipping is fast and I got my paint rack within 3 days.

Before I ended up with the photo above, I had a pile of wood that looked like puzzle pieces that needed to be assembled without the help of any instructions or diagrams. Not to worry it is easy to figure out, even by the novice, but I am sure some people may have a more difficult time figuring out how the pieces fit and need that extra bit of help. I mean even Ikea stuff comes with some form of diagram right? I used super glue for construction against my better judgement only because I didn't want to wait the 24 hours for wood glue to dry.

The paint rack is constructed in 3 parts. 2 rectangle shaped paint racks that hold 25 paint pots each and the rack stand.  I started by building one of the paint racks. Now I have quite a bit of experience building architectural models but even with all my experience I managed to screw up building the first rack. I glued the sides to the top rack with the hole cut-outs but then I couldn't glue the bottom of the rack and it fell apart. 

After a few attempts to glue it together, I found that the best way was to glue the 2 smaller sides(the side that says Burn In Designs) together with the top and bottom of the rack and then that makes it easier to glue the longer sides after(which is why I reiterate the need for a diagram or instructions). The second rack was a lot easier and it was glued together with less stress.

Now the rack stand was another story. My wife saw the difficulty I was having with keeping it glued together that she thought I was duped out of my money for something that will never work. I was almost convinced of that too until I finally got it to stay together through some feat of hobby skill. I was almost afraid to put the paint racks on it since I thought for sure it would collapse. I nervously put the racks on the stand and then carefully moved it to my desk, making sure to hold my breath so it wouldn't move and started to fill the rack with the paints that I use most often. Then my wife and I stood by my desk and stared at the fragile but oddly sturdy awesome paint rack that now adorns my work space. My wife thought for sure that the whole paint rack would collapse during the night but here it is 3 days later still standing. 

The cool thing was that included in my package was some little trinkets of laser cut skulls and advertising discs. I didn't have another use for them so I glued them to the rack for aesthetics. For my paint rack I glued the wood piece with the company name on the outside so when any gamer friends come over they can see who makes it and also I like the font on the company name, but you can also glue it with the name facing the inside of the paint rack to give it a more clean look.

Final thoughts: I give this paint rack an overall score of 8.5 out of 10

Here's how I grade it:

-.5- for slight difficulty of  overall construction

-.5- for not including a diagram or instructions on how to build

-.5- one of my racks had a circle that was not fully cut so I had to cut it with an xacto knife. It was a very obvious QC issue that could have been easily noticed when packing it up for shipping.(even I have gotten knocked for QC when I was selling my bases)

Other than the QC issue it would have been a 9 overall, and I highly recommend buying from them. It is pretty sturdy even if it doesn't look it at first. They also have many options to choose from. If you don't like wood(or the smell of it because it will smell like burnt wood for awhile, just the nature of laser cut products) they also come in a variety of colored acrylic which costs a bit more, and they have another variety of paint rack that replaces one of the paint racks with 2 drawers for your hobby tools. I am sold on these and would most likely purchase from them again in the future.

Keep on gaming!