My Bench Gets an Expansion.

[GazzaS]

G'day fellas!

       After mulling it over for months, I decided to upgrade my bench.  Many of you may not know, but my bench is totally mobile.  My house, despite being a four bedroom house really has no place that I can use 365 days a year.  The spare rooms have no air conditioning, and the bedrooms are too small.  My 'master' bedroom is really no larger than the child's bedroom I slept in during the 1970's...    It's only 12ft by 12ft.  And the ensuite bathroom, including shower is slightly over 3ft by 9ft.  So most of the year I model in the living room.  But at Christmas time, I must surrender my spot to the Christmas tree.

My bench is constructed of square aluminum tubing, steel brackets, rivets, some aluminum sheet, and plywood.

It's light enough to pick up and carry if I remove all of the plastic storage drawer sets and modelling stuff.  And it sits on casters.  I built it tall to prevent me from stooping.  When I'm at the bench, the plywood top is slightly lower than my pecs.

 

It's 1meter or 39 inches wide.  The oil stain on the lower shelf is from my knife sharpening kit.  The wet stone leaked a little oil.

 

And 20 inches deep. 

The power box is held on by Alien Tape.  Handy stuff if you need it!  I didn't want to possibly electrify my bench by badly placed screws.

 

I just had no room for all of the little things that you want at arms reach every time you're there.  So, I went upwards.  I needed to buy more brackets, rivets, and angle aluminum.  I wanted to add two shelves in a lightweight configuration so that the bench wouldn't be top heavy nor unstable.  But I didn't want to buy a lot of stuff because I keep a lot of scraps if they're longer than 3 ft.

 

And here she is:

All of my paints and large bottles of solvents are kept in the white roll-away cabinet.  And my wife's music stand holds all of the kit directions in place.  And finally all of my paint brushes and little tools are off the bench-top. 

I use cheap desk lamps with the brightest bulbs in cool-white that I can find.  If you look into them, you'll be thinking:  "Take-me-to-your-leader".  I also keep a large bottle of CA solvent handy.  Good for getting those shiny droplets of CA off the faux-wood tiles.

So...   it's junk.  But it's rigid and can suit any modellers need as long as he stays away from really large stuff like a Monogram 1/48 B-29.

Thanks for looking!

 

 

[ScottsGT]

Given your space limitations, you’re doing great!  If you were closer I’d give you an old roll around emergency AC unit I have in storage.  It’s one of those stand alone units that you exhaust out through a window. 

[Bomber_County]

Gaz, it’s a very ingenious solution, it’s certainly not junk and it gives you a semi permanent bench, congrats…

[Martinnfb]

Superfortress next in line ?

[GazzaS]

33 minutes ago, Martinnfb said:

Superfortress next in line ?

Oh no...   That was like 7 years ago.  I ended up building it's own stand with a swivel top and a pivoting carriage enabling me to reach all of the kit's surfaces while standing.  I almost finished, but ended up binning it.  The surface detail was so sparse and my scribing skills so poor that I couldn't bear to look at it.  All of the pics were on photobucket, so you know how that went.  It was foiled top to bottom and wingtip to wingtip.  I had even alternated the grain of the foil so that they alternated in different light wherever they were supposed to.