Making a Pochade

As the weather picks up and we all look forward to another summer, my thoughts have turned to plein air  sketching and painting. Whilst I did some sketching outdoors last year, I really want to do a lot more this summer and to aid me in this noble task I decided to make a pochade. (Basically a box to put your paints in.) And although I do have plans to make a 'fantastic' all encompassing box from scratch which I'll probably need a car to carry around! I thought for my first attempt I'd just try to keep it simple and find a hinged box that I could convert or adapt. (Pimp my pochade)

Any-who, there are a lot of home-made pochades out there on the net and I thought I would share my attempts for anyone who is thinking of putting one together.

I searched high and low to find a cheap box to convert and eventually came across this one from Ryman, it was actually £5.99 when I bought it. The first thing I did was remove the contents including the plastic insert which was not that easy and needed some gentle persuasion.

I really wanted to have the option of fastening the box to a tripod so I cut a piece of pine strip-wood, drilled a hole for the T-nut, clamped and glued it in place with wood glue. The idea was to use the wood to accommodate the T-nut and also strengthen the base because the box is just made up with some sort of hardboard. I also glued some smaller pieces of wood onto the lid, the two thin strips of redwood, top and bottom, will accommodate a 5x7 panel or spiral bound pad whilst the wider side pieces offer support to 1/8 imperial watercolour paper or block. (7½ x 11 inches)

I glued a couple of thin strips of wood along the length of the strengthening section thereby creating a shallow compartment for pencils etc. (Below shows different compartments and with 5x7 acrylic pad)

As you can see from the above photo, the 1/8 imperial watercolour paper block (7½ x 11 inches) fits quite nicely inside the lid. It does need some sort of small clip to hold it in place and as soon as I find something appropriate, I will post an update.

The biggest problem I have found in converting a box into a pochade is with the hinges, because ideally you need the lid to stay open as you paint and at a desired angle. There are all sorts of inventive designs out there on the internet using metal plates and wing-nuts fixed to the side to adjust and tighten the position of the lid however a trip to my local hardware store uncovered something called a 'joint stay' which cost me £1 for a pair. Worth a punt I thought.

Original Joint Stay

The joint stay has a very strong hinge in the middle section, I believe it is meant to fit on the inside of a cupboard or lid, so to adapt it, I cut off the fittings on the end with a hacksaw because I wanted to fit it to the outside of my box.

I had to drill another hole in each length of the stay to stop it from moving and it works so well that I have only needed to fix one side. It may well loosen with use but there is always the option to do the other side as well. A couple of things to note, first I arranged and fixed the stay with the box on it's side in the closed position so I could make sure the hinged part portruded enough to allow the box to open. Also the original hinges are very femmer and will probably need to be replaced with something stronger.

The Joint Stay doing it's job!

You can see from the photos that all the extra wood bits I have used sit about 1/4 inch lower than the depth of the box. This allows room for a pad, block or panel to sit in the lid recess and a flat palette to sit in the base, giving you the choice of oils, acrylics or watercolour.

By coincidence this wooden palette fits perfectly!

Okay, so it's not perfect, but hopefully it will do the job until I can come up with something better and the total cost came in under £10 (although I did use bits and pieces that I had lying around and it still needs some tweaking). I should say that the T-nut which is a metric size M6 does not fit a tripod screw  which is apparently a 1/4 inch and so I need to replace it. Hopefully this will not be too difficult although in the UK, the imperial sizes don't seem as common place as in the US. I guess I need to take another trip to my local hardware store.