Organizing the Workbench

As I continue to unpack and unbox my belongings, I knew that my hobby supplies were in need of organization and arrangement. I'd been living out of a small space, in California, and would constantly have to shift my growing collection of knives, files, paints, brushes, etc. And then, I ran across these folks at HobbyZone. While the parent company is in Poland, these folks are the USA side of the business, which is essential due to the high costs of shipping their product across the Atlantic (one quote was $85 for $145 of product).

Being that I am still on a rather tight budget, but desperately needing to sort out my tables, I went ahead and bought six items that I felt would best suit my immediate organizing needs. They are pictured below.

Yep, that lot set me back about $150, including shipping. It does not appear to be all that much, but I must admit that I expect they will more than prove their worth as I ramp up my painting and assembly, this summer.

However, the "some assembly required" really means "you're putting it all together, yourself...good luck!" Consult the below, less than stellar, image.

This is the 30cm (they also have 20cm width versions) six-drawer shelf unit. As I did not have any clamps, I had to go with taping the pieces together once I glued them. After about an hour, I removed the tape and set the bits aside to dry overnight.

The drawers have a small piece of acrylic, so as to give a window into what is inside, and these have a special cutout in the wood frames.

It took about 45 minutes to assemble this, apart from the taping and drying, but a couple pieces only took me about 15 minutes of cursing and swearing to fit together.

I found the corner piece to be the most troublesome as things are put together in such a way as to really need two people working on it at once, but tape had to cover for the lack of additional hands.

I did notice that, especially in the piece above, some of the wood did not fit "exactly" as you'd expect, but as I had plenty of glue in the bottle, I did not feel the need to be conservative with it.

And the above is what it all turned out to look like. I am not an enthusiastic supporter, but I've not really gotten into the groove of working with my figures as yet, due to the frigid weather. Yet, I can see that I am likely to add about another four to six pieces to this, sometime in the summer and maybe another six in the future. They have different pieces that will suit for differing needs and what I want is a storage shelf that will fit my spray paint/primer cans, which they have.

No, that is not the extent of my paints. I was just beginning to fill the space, to see about what else I might need to accommodate all of my supplies.

I am not unhappy with the purchase, and I to anticipate buying more of it. Yet, until I get back into the swing of things, I am reserving final judgement for later.

I do want to help spread the word, though. I believe these folks are fulfilling a need in the hobby and I would like for them to be successful.

By the by, these are machine cut, not laser cut, which means there's no burnt smell to linger about for months after assembly.

Also, they provide magnets for everything, either one or two per side, and two for bottom and top (as necessary), so it all stick together quite nicely...no explosion of shelves after a mere bump of the table. Incidentally, if you insert the magnets wrongwayround, you can easily tap them out and fix your error (ahem... personal experience is an honest teacher).

If your table or workbench is a mess, you might benefit from a visit to their site. For those of you in the EU or UK, here's is the site for the Polish business end HobbyZone PL.