Home Forums Explore Subjects Plein Air Mabef M105 Pochade Box – Modifications

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  • #995255
    Nomad Z
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        This article describes the various modifications that I’ve made to my Mabef M105 pochade box. If you haven’t done so already, I suggest you read my review of the box before modification, which can be found here…

        https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1432417

        Although I refer to modifications, most of the changes are actually add-ons or accessories that I’ve made to work with the box – the actual fabric of the box itself is relatively untouched and hasn’t changed substantially from the original design.

        There are quite a few mods, all of which have come about to address the various issues I highlighted in the review. As I said in that article, the basic box is good, but there is scope for it to be better.

        Before getting into the detail, I’ll list the mods below, but note that they weren’t carried out in this order…

        [INDENT]Strip off all hardware, lightly sand all surfaces, apply boiled linseed oil, and reassemble.
        Add fittings for attaching a shoulder strap.
        Replace panel clamps to improve access and capacity.
        Make panel carrier slots wider and deeper.
        Accessory tray that clips to side of box.
        Replacement palette that doesn’t have brush holes.
        Various danglers for rags, turp can and rubbish bag.
        Dividers for storage area.
        [/INDENT]

        Refinishing
        In the review, I mentioned that the general finish of the wood could have been a bit smoother. It’s not a big deal, but the difference became more apparent to me once I had made new wooden parts, because my bits were nicely sanded and oiled. So, the box was dismantled and all surfaces given a light sanding using a well-worn foam sanding block (probably around 200 grit or finer). Everything was then given a fairly generous coating of boiled linseed oil which was left to soak in for a while before wiping of the excess and the box reassembled.

        This was an easy mod to do, made all the easier by the fact that the box comes with an oiled finish. If it had been lacquered or varnished, it would have been much more hassle. The sanding was light and only intended to make the surfaces feel smoother – there was no need to get down to bare, dry wood because more of the same finish was going to be applied.

        Shoulder Strap Fittings
        A fairly big shortcoming of the box was the lack of a shoulder strap. The reason I bought it was to get something lighter and easier to carry than a French easel, and lugging a small suitcase around negated that somewhat.

        The loops for attaching the strap are fairly substantial picture frame fittings that I found in a box…

        [ATTACH]849406[/ATTACH]

        The other one is fitted in the same way, at the same distance up from the bottom of the box. The main thing here was to make sure that the loop didn’t catch on the palette when it was slid out to access the storage. It was also important to make sure that the fixing was strong. You can see this in more detail here…

        [ATTACH]849407[/ATTACH]

        The upper screw is a self-tapper that bites into the wood and is in line with the front panel of the base. The lower one is a small hex socket bolt that passes through the side and is secured on the inside with a nut and washer. The self tapper was used because I wanted the loop clear of the box to make room for the clip on the strap, but the position of the hole was such that it couldn’t pass through the side (needed to be a blind hole, in other words). In practice, these attachments have worked really well – no indication at all that they will move around or the fixings give way.

        #1271888
        Nomad Z
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            Panel Clamps & Carrier Slots
            Here, you can see one of the replacement panel clamps next to an original one…

            [ATTACH]849408[/ATTACH]

            The angled part overlaps the edge of the panel and pinches it against the easel. In the original, it is far too long and gets in the way. With the replacements, access is almost completely unhindered.

            Another issue with the original was that it was slightly marginal for being able to fit a 12″ panel (the box is designed for 30cm panels, which are slightly smaller). The panel clamps have a little tab the goes into the horizontal slots to stop them from rotating when the screws are loosened for adjustment, and this limits hw far outwrds the clamps can move – the tabs hit the ends of the slots. By making the tabs closer to the screw holes…

            [ATTACH]849409[/ATTACH]

            …the clamps can move out a bit further. This is enough to make the difference between maybe being able to fit a 12″ panel and definitely being able to fit one…

            [ATTACH]849410[/ATTACH]

            When I set up for that last photo, I noticed that there was a little gap at the end of one of the slots, meaning there was scope for the clamp to move out a bit further yet.

            The slots in the panel carrier were made a little deeper to allow 12″ panels to fit, and were also widened from 6mm to 7.5mm to allow two Belle Arti MDF panels (3.5mm thick) to be fitted back-to-back.

            Here’s the panel carrier with two of each type of panel in the slots…

            [ATTACH]849411[/ATTACH]

            Making the slots bigger needed to be done with some care to avoid encroaching into other features (such as clearance in the two bars with the slots to allow the panel clamp screws to pass by).

            Doing this mod was made easier due to the fact that thet two bars with the slots can be unscrewed and taken away from the box. I put them in a vice on my milling machine and took lots of fine cuts until they were at the size I wanted.

            #1271889
            Nomad Z
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                I’ll describe the next series of mods as if I was setting up the box for use.

                Accessory Tray
                The box is fitted to the tripod and the lid is opened fully, to reveal the accessory tray…

                [ATTACH]849413[/ATTACH]

                Note the two little magnets embedded into the right-hand edge of the box.

                The tray is sized such that it doesn’t conflict with the panel clamps when things are closed up…

                [ATTACH]849414[/ATTACH]

                Clearly, the tray should be pushed towards the back before closing the lid.

                The tray is hooked over the edge of the box and the magnets help to keep in in position…

                [ATTACH]849415[/ATTACH]

                The tray has a few features…

                The wooden panel at the far end is a brush holder. Rather than the five holes, each of different sizes, that Mabef put in the palette, I have made lots of holes of various sizes, so that I can put brushes wherever I want. The idea isn’t to fill it with brushes, but to be able to pick a spot where the brush will be accessible and not contaminate others. The holder is attached using a bit of piano hinge and a rather carefully shaped block of wood to make the angles work. There are two magnets embedded into the far edge of the tray to help stop the holder from lifting when removing a brush (and thus causing the thing to tip forwards and have brushes full of paint hitting the hand).

                Here’s a side view with the brush holder in the working position…

                [ATTACH]849416[/ATTACH]

                The holder is positioned and angled to ensure that the brush tips cannot get in the way of my right arm – they are always beyond the plane of the canvas.

                In the lower middle, there is a little batten running across the tray, and this has two functions. Its main job is to stop things from sliding down from the upper area (I like to have the box tilted). It’s also where the dipper goes – the wider part is a thin bit of wood glued to the batten (in a recess to keep it flush, so it would fit when packaed away), and the dipper clips onto this. The position of the batten and dipper were worked out through experimentation – I wanted the dipper to be clear of my right arm/sleeve, and I wanted the space in the upper and lower areas to match the things that are likely to be placed there (dirty palette knives in the top, tubes or medium in the bottom). It was a friction fit at first, and was then screwed in place once the position was determined.

                Finally, there is a bit of wire at the bottom that hinges out to hang over the lower edge. This is for hanging the turp can…

                [ATTACH]849412[/ATTACH]

                The wire is 1.6mm (1/16″) stainless steel welding rod – very strong, and comes in straight pieces 13″ long. It’s used in various places for other mods.

                The V shaped feature in the middle prevents the can from unhooking. It has to be lifted up quite a lot and the bail handle allowed to fall down before it can be fitted or removed. The wide double hook arrangement means that the can doesn’t swing from side to side.

                #1271890
                Nomad Z
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                    Danglers For Rags & Bag
                    The next step when setting up is to fit what I call the danglers, and here they are…

                    [ATTACH]849417[/ATTACH]

                    The clip at the top right with the wire hook is for dangling a cloth rag (for drying washed brushes). Below that, the cord and cheapie karabiner dangle the roll of paper towels (for paint squidging and cleanup), and the bits on the left (two clips and some bungee cord, and two bits of bent wire) are for holding the rubbish bag.

                    The rag dangler is simply hooked onto the left-hand shoulder strap loop…

                    [ATTACH]849418[/ATTACH]

                    And that’s followed by the cord loop of the paper towel dangler…

                    [ATTACH]849419[/ATTACH]

                    The cord loop goes into the metal loop, and the karabiner end is drawn through, dropped down through the roll of paper towels, and clipped to the other shoulder strap loop…

                    [ATTACH]849420[/ATTACH]

                    #1271891
                    Nomad Z
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                        Bag Dangler
                        Something I found very frustrating when I first used the box, was the rubbish bag. I had done the usual thing in finding a way to clip it to the box, but it was always getting caught by the wind and flapping about. Sometimes, it would whip up to the palette and get paint on it, and I’d then get paint on my hands when I tried to open the bag to drop a paper towel in (which was covered in paint, which would get on the bag, which would then also get on my hands). I wanted to find a way to make this better, and here’s what I came up with…

                        [ATTACH]849421[/ATTACH]

                        Two bits of bent wire with an odd-shaped hook thing at the ends. The idea is that the handles of the carrier bag are engaged with the hook shapes, and these prevent the bag from both sliding off the ends of the wire, and back towrds the box. Since the wire danglers extend out from the box, the top edge of the bag passing between them is clear, like this…

                        [ATTACH]849422[/ATTACH]

                        The wire danglers are angled to get some tension into the edge of the bag to help keep it open. If you look under the edge of the box where my hand is, you can see one of the little clips that’s attached to the bungee cord. This is routed in such a way as to pull the other top edge of the bag towards the box. In this way, the top of the bag is held open – I can drop a paper towel in without it catching the side of the bag and getting paint everywhere.

                        The bungee is routed like this…

                        [ATTACH]849423[/ATTACH]

                        It goes under the box and passes round the bottom of the tripod’s ball head. It them goes down and passes through a little wire hook fitted to the bottom of the tripod’s central column, and the other end of the bungee has the second clip, which is attached to the bottom of the bag.

                        What this arrangement does is not only hold the top of the bag open by pulling the inner edge of the bag to the right, it also holds the bottom of the bag down, meaning it no longer flaps about in the wind, gets onto the palette and covered in paint. The wire loop on the lower clip…

                        [ATTACH]849424[/ATTACH]

                        …can be removed from the bungee and hooked around a different knot to allow for some adjustment in length. I did this because I wasn’t sure what length I’d need, or how much tension. So far, it has worked as shown, where the bungee is slightly slack – it doesn’t actually need to be tight, as long as the slack is minimal. The strength of the bungee is such that the bag getting caught by the wind doesn’t really stretch it, so the slight slack just gets taken up and the bag’s movement is arrested. The main thing is to set the length of the bungee such that it doesn’t hang so low that it comes away from the hook at the bottom of the column.

                        So far, I’ve used this bag dangler setup in moderately gusty conditions, and it worked like a charm – the bag stayed in place, and the top stayed open. It turned out that the clips grip it better than expected, which I discovered when I tried to open the palette. On doing so, the bungee became tensioned and the palette stopped moving. I wondered about how to get around that, and realised that I can just temporarily disengage the bungee from the hook at the bottom of the column.

                        #1271892
                        Nomad Z
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                            Replacement Palette
                            No specific picture of the replacement palette, but see the foregoing for a few examples. It’s very similar to the original in terms of dimensions, with the exception of the plywood, which is 3.5mm thick rather than 2.5mm (because that’s what I had lying around). The slots are 4mm, so it still fits fine. The two main differences are the lack of brush holder holes (which mean I can lay out paint blobs down the left hand side as well as along the top), and the addition of small holes in the top of the main batten at the left, to allow fitting of the wire bag danglers.

                            Another little mod I did, to both this and the original one, was to round off the corners at the right-hand end to about a 5mm radius (just under 1/4″). This helps when inserting the panel in the slots in the box – you can hold it with the left hand, slide a corner along the left side of the box until it goes into a slot, and then bring the other corner in to the other slot. In other words, you can present it to the box at an angle rather than trying to keep the edges of the palette and box parallel and trying to engage with both slots at once. It’s much easier and quicker this way, and the original square corners would hamper the motion.

                            Storage Dividers
                            As the bag dangler perhaps shows, I like things to stay where they’re put, and this goes for the supplies as well. To stop stuff from moving around too much when the box is being carried, I added some little dividers in key places…

                            [ATTACH]849425[/ATTACH]

                            They’re just offcuts of beech, sized to try and get a friction fit. In some cases, they were a bit loose, so some thin card is used to increase the friction. They work fine, and nothing gets over them even though they’re lower than the depth of the storage area (something that’s taken advantage of at the top left where the bag danglers and little plastic sppon pass over one).

                            Closing Comments
                            Compared to what the box was like when I first got it, I have to say that the various modifications and add-ons have transformed it. It has gone from a good, well made box with some shortcomings, to one that is excellent. It all works really well. The extra space provided by the tray makes a big difference, and I’m really pleased with the brush holder – it keeps them out of the way but still easily accessible. If anything, the bag dangler is a significant change, if only for reducing the frustration of the bag flapping about in the wind and paint getting all over it.

                            As a workspace, it’s all very self-contained. There is no painting gear on the ground at all – everything is in, on, or attached to, the box.

                            One thing to bear in mind is that it isn’t practical to leave paint on the palette if the box is to be packed away – there would be nowhere to put the tray. This isn’t an issue for me because I always clean up after a session.

                            Setup time is pretty quick. When all the mods were done, I timed myself from the point of arriving at the spot, with the box on the strap (across the chest), and my daysack on my back with the tripod strapped to it. From that, to being ready to squeeze out paint, it took five minutes.

                            Overall, I’m really pleased with the end result. I had originally got this box because I was dithering between buying something fancy and making something – I figured that I should just get something decent and see how I got on with a view to using the experience as a basis for getting or making something better later. I ended up seeing the shortcomings and ways to solve them, and set about modifying what I had. Although the price was reasonable at £115, if I were to consider the cost of my time to do the mods, this is now one rather expensive pochade box. Fortunately, I like doing this sort of thing and didn’t charge myself a penny. I suppose it’s now quite heavily customised – tuned to the way I like to work, and I’ve been thinking that I probably won’t bother looking at getting another ‘better’ box, or making something fancy from scratch.

                            #1271887
                            graz
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                                Very nice modifications, but it seems like you’re fairly close to French Easel proportions when a tripod is factored in.

                                #1271893
                                Nomad Z
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                                    Very nice modifications, but it seems like you’re fairly close to French Easel proportions when a tripod is factored in.

                                    Not really. The M105 is just over half the height of the French easel’s box part (12″ against 20″), and the latter extends further at the legs and canvas holder. The other two dimensions are similar, except that the French easel is bigger where the canvas holder bits protrude, and is overall noticeably more bulky when a canvas is attached.

                                    The tripod is quite small – a bit longer than the 15″ or so width of the M105, and occupies something like a 4″ diameter tubular shape. That said, the tripod isn’t really a factor because it’s strapped to the back of my small rucksack, which would be with me with either easel (contains paper towel roll, turp can, apron, and the host of other stuff I usually carry).

                                    #1526517

                                    I just purchase a barely used 105 on eBay. I immediately noticed the shortcomings you mentioned in your first article. I understand your modifications in the second article, but the images are not showing up. Were they deleted or am I doing something wrong? Mark S.

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