Modeling Bench

For quite a while I had been building models either at the kitchen table or on my layout bench work. Neither was a great option. At the kitchen table I had to drag everything out when I wanted to work on a model and put it all away in time for meals or company. Along with that I had to worry about damaging the table with knife blades or spilled paint or glue. Working on the side of the layout wasn't much better. Less work was getting done on the layout itself and I was seeing more tools and half built kits than track! There had to be a better way.

Cleaning out the garage one Saturday afternoon I came across an old desk that belonged to my son when he was in high school. It wasn't a big desk but it had possibilities. The more I looked at it, the more I realized this desk could make a decent model building bench. It was approximately 22" x 47" with a small side drawer and a slide out keyboard tray. I could add some storage, maybe a power strip and some lights and make this into a nice place to build models. Follow along with the photographs and I'll show you what I came up with. Hopefully you'll get some ideas if you're thinking about a modeling bench for yourself.

This is the desk that I started with. The top is approximately 22" x 47". I decided I could use the side drawer for some of my most often used tools, pencils and scale rulers. The slide out keyboard shelf will hold my magnetic glue jig and my foam car cradle plus paper plans or directions for current projects.

For storage, I purchased two 12-drawer organizers from Harbor Freight for about $10 each. To support the organizers and a few shelves I used 1x8 pine boards cut to fit my design. The boards were coated with a gloss polyurethane before assembly.

At this stage I'm laying out the shelves and storage units and making sure everything fits before I use glue and a pneumatic brad nailer to hold everything together.

Here is my (almost) finished modeling bench. I plan on installing a power strip on the side of the bench for lighting, my soldering iron and charger for my Dremel tool. I may add some additional lighting as well. As I said earlier, the yellow organizers are from Harbor Freight. The blue organizers were an after thought and something I already had in my basement. The white baskets are from Amazon and they fit quite well. The small drawer on the left side holds my most common tools and scales. The slide out tray hold my magnetic gluing jig and a foam cradle for working on rolling stock.

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