IKEA SKADIS Peg Boards - Nerf Blaster Mounting Part 1

My blasters have spent most of their lives in kit bags or in the case of my Stryfe, a FDL printed mount on the top of a unit. It's not ideal and creates a great of clutter. My LARP weapons have been mounted on some very rudimentary weapon mounts in my hallway but over time they have decayed and need something fresh. I figured that given my hallway is home to the LARP weaponary, a peg board solution to mount both blasters and swords would be in order.

1st Gen LARP Sword Holder - Not ideal

 

IKEA SKADIS pegboards have a reputation for having a wide range of uses but mounts for blasters are fewer. Speaking with my fellow BritNerfers, printed hooks don't seem to have the strength to do the job. There are printed magazine mounts around but I don't fancy paying for a series of STLs. Given there are no open source, free to use systems available, I elected to rectify that. It also gives the option to bake in a hardened design from the outset.

T-nuts!

The SKADIS T-nut project was a golden find over on Printables. I figured that creating a plate you can anchor the T-nuts to and then bolt a mag well to for display would be the way to go. I modified the Captain Slug Talon magazine holder to add a set of screw ports at the base. That then gets bolted into three trapped nuts in the back of the T-nut plate base which can be hung on the SKADIS board. A blaster is then slotted onto the blaster before hooking on to the board.

Gryphon with a test mag well holder mounted on the smaller board

I picked up 2 of the 76x56cm boards from my local IKEA plus some other bits. Getting public transport back from the store meant I had to be creative. I'm reasonably confident the security guy thought I was mental adding parcel tape handles to the packages outside the shop. Still, it meant my hand wasn't cramped to all hell travelling home. 

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. Parcel tape and trauma shears can do a lot of things!

IKEA don't supply wall fixing hardware and I didn't want to charge in straight away with bolting things into the dry wall of my flat. Instead, I opted to try Command Strips. Apparently, the large ones can hold 7.2kg for a set of four. I found a blog post that uses 8 pairs for a single 76x56mm so I'm guess that means I've got 14.4kg minus the 2.5kg IKEA states the board weighs leaves me around 12kg to play with. I've trusted these command strips with my tablet mounted to a kitchen cupboard door for the last 4 years so I figure I'd trial it with my blasters for a little while. The trick with getting them to stick properly is to make sure the surface is clean and has time to bond before you put a bond on it. If it goes crash in the middle of the night then I'll know I need to go to the local hardware shop and grab the necessaries.

For pistols and the Spring Thunder, I've taken inspiration from the My3DBase design here and re-created it with SKADIS compatibility. I didn't like their hollow approach, I prefer to have more material supporting the blaster so didn't create a cut away like their design. I don't know how wide their design is but I set mine at 20mm to accomadate my Gecko trigger. For mine, I added an optional blind pilot hole for an M3 bolt to be inserted into the back of the plate to add a little more structural strength if the user wants it. I think for some denser blasters, a little bit of extra steel won't hurt. Heavier blasters would benefit from more walls around the bolt holes to add more material around stress points.

For full length blasters, I'll publish everything in a second post plus updates on how the basic hook comes out once it's printed.

Now I've finished up my degree, it's nice to be getting back into the hobby and sprucing up the flat. I've got smaller peg boards to mount the LARP weapons to and will likely make a small display of character kit, too. I'll keep the blog posted on those updates, too.

Once the bugs are ironed out, these will all be public domain on Printables. Command strips are in the post. Tomorrow is a tactical gear day to start filling orders.