The Insert I Rebuilt Twice

I mentioned in the Brass: Birmingham writeup that I ended up rebuilding that box’s insert myself, and a couple people asked what that actually involves, so here’s the fuller version, workbench and all.

The stock insert for a lot of these heavier games solves storage the way a first-pass engineering drawing solves a problem: technically correct, nothing actually optimized. Tiles rattle loose the second you tilt the box. Cards get crammed in a slot sized for a smaller print run before an expansion existed. You end up doing the thing everyone does, which is bagging everything separately and losing the point of having a molded tray at all.

First attempt at fixing Brass, I did what I usually do, measured the interior cavity, sketched a grid on paper, cut foam core with a hobby knife and a metal ruler, and assembled something that looked fine and then didn’t survive three closings of the lid. The tolerances were off by maybe two millimeters in a couple of places, which sounds like nothing until you’re doing it by hand with a blade instead of a machine, and two millimeters is the difference between a snug friction fit and a compartment that slowly walks itself out of alignment every time you move the box.

Second attempt, I actually treated it like the small design problem it was instead of a weekend craft project. Built a cardstock mockup first, tested the fit dry before committing foam core to it, added a half-millimeter of clearance everywhere instead of cutting to the exact dimension, because a hair of give is what actually holds tolerances in real materials, cutting to the theoretical exact number is how you get a part that only fits in the CAD file. Took about three hours total across two evenings. It’s held up fine since, no rattling, no walking, lid closes flat.

I know this is a slightly absurd amount of process for a cardboard box. Priya gives me a hard time about it every time she sees the bin of scrap foam core on the workbench, calls it my “second job.” But there’s something satisfying about a problem with a genuinely correct answer, tight clearances, good friction fit, that’s rare enough in the rest of my life that I don’t mind spending an evening chasing it over something as low-stakes as a game box.

Haven’t rebuilt one since, mostly because I’ve gotten better at just checking reviews for insert quality before I buy anything heavy now. But the bin of foam core scraps is still out there on the bench, waiting for whatever’s next.