Packing Fragile Things For Transport
Posted by Owen Jones in Uncategorized, tags: auctions, business, crafts, gifts, hobbies, home business, house, Internet Business, marketing, other, packaging, sales, shipping, Uncategorized, unclassifiedThe most difficult things to pack are the fragile ones and the more fragile the most difficult, as you may well imagine. Shape may also play a part in making it even more problematic. Imagine having to pack antiques, fine art, porcelain, glass or even light bulbs for shipping, whether you will move them yourself or not.
Bubble wrap is a great boon in this field. Previously, fragile items were packed in newspapers and even straw. Indeed, newspapers are still used fairly effectively by some packagers in order to save money although bubble wrap is fairly cheap.
The easiest fragile items to pack for shipment or transport are flat items like photographs and paintings. If the photograph is framed, it is best to wrap it in two layers of bubble wrap and then insert it into a flat, corrugated cardboard box.
There are different sized boxes which will hold one or several pictures and the boxes vary in area too. It is vital that the contents of the shipping box fit snugly inside and cannot rattle about inside.
The more the contents are able to move, the more chance there is that the box will break and the contents will get lost or damaged. The further you are transporting the items, the more important this rule is.
If you are transporting oil paintings on canvas or water colours on paper, it is easier to roll them up slackly, say around a rolled up newspaper and then insert the package into a cardboard or polystyrene tube. The tube might be round or triangular. Pack the ends of the roll to stop it moving back and forth.
Manufacturers encourage customers to keep all original packaging, but it does mount up if you do not have much space. While transporting televisions, monitors or microwave ovens, it is better to use the original polystyrene packing and the original cardboard box.
If you do not have these things, you could purchase a box to transport these items and you will have to wrap it in bubble wrap and pack the corners of the box with newspapers. If you are only moving the TV from one house to another, you can wrap it in blankets and perhaps place it in a box to prevent it rolling about.
If you want to send or transport crockery, you could line a cardboard box with two layers of bubble wrap, wrap each plate in a sheet of newspaper and stack them in the box. Be sure that they cannot move from side to side with more newspaper packing.
A dearer, but more professional way of doing this is to fill a box with polystyrene balls and slide the plates into it carefully. You can often purchase the polystyrene balls by the sackful in outdoor markets.
If you are anxious about newsprint coming off on the items in the box, you could buy a substantial roll of recycled paper for not a lot of money. Whatever you spend on packaging when sending to a customer, it is almost certainly a lot less than sending a replacement.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now concerned with boxes for shipping art. If you want to know more go to Where Can I Buy Shipping Boxes?
Entries (RSS)