A Prototype wall mount for "unframeable" fly sets/displays

 When the estate of Ronn Lucas, Sr. sent me the collection of Marc Madore's flies in its collection, I was, of course, delighted....but at the same time dismayed.  The collection will, of course, be going to the Atlantic Salmon Museum in Doaktown, NB, and I want to frame it for display before it gets there.  But the great little vignettes, if you will, of steps in tying, say, a Bomber, do not lend themselves at all to being framed in the usual sense:

Back in my days at the other fly fishing museum I was associated with, I built the bases for plexiglass (or acrylic) vitrines which we purchased to make large 3-dimensional displays for a traveling exhibition.  This was one of those I built:

My thinking about the problem with displaying Marc's vignettes rolled around into enclosing them in table top-sized plexiglass/acrylic vitrines, so I started googling just that...plexiglass vitrines.

Are you kidding me??  Have you priced a little, say, 4x4x10 inch plexi enclosure lately?  Yikes!!  That idea was a non-starter for both my wallet and the Salmon Museum's.  What to do?

I built a zillion 1:24 and 1:25 scale model cars as a boy, so I was acquainted with the basic size of those cars, and vaguely remembered that some people store them in little plexi boxes that are about the size I was looking for.   So...Google 1:24 scale display case...and away we go!  

It turns out you can buy these and similar for any amount from the lowest I saw in Ebay and Amazon ($14.99 plus usually at least 10 bucks shipping) to Amazon's $29.99 unit.  All essentially the same case.

I happen to be a veteran of the eBay wars and know how to read the fine print pretty well (lol, except for things like divorce papers and bank notices).   For once, I did it right and purchased a lot of 24 1:24 acrylic display cases for my winning bid of $11.50 plus $23.99 shipping.  That turns out to be $1.48/ display.  Such a deal.  They arrived safe and sound just a couple days after the bidding ended.

One of the twenty four:

So, one of Marc's vignettes could just sit inside one of these on a table or some such thing:

But where's the fun in that?  It could get jostled around and even - heaven forbid - someone could easily open it and snatch or disturb the goodies in side.  So we move on.

My old friend Yoshi Akiyama (whom I hired as collections manager for that other museum) and I spent hours in my basement making little shelves and holders for that aforementioned traveling exhibit like all the little doo-dads holding the fly rods up in this photo from that exhibition:

Even at 74 (turned that today, no less), I can still come up with an idea or two.  I came up with this basic prototype, made from scrap pine, in about 5 minutes:

Works great for capturing one of Marc's vignette's with the case on it!

Importantly, I can drill tiny holes in the case where it overlaps the wood base to insert small screws to prevent pilfering.

I can see making the platform out of a nice cherry, oak, or even just nicely finished white pine.  I can think of other uses for it, too:

Or even for displaying your cherished childhood hot chocolate mugs!

It's obviously easy to build, so I hope I get to see other cases like it my friends and acquaintances make that they share here!  One of these days I'll share photos of them displaying Marc's flies inside the Atlantic Salmon Museum....which I hope you will visit!!

Cheers,

Gary