Display advice?

Finding a used curio cabinet strictly for displaying your model kits comes to mind.

a Lockable glass-fronted book-case

If you know of a good cabinet shop, they can build a display cabinet to your specifications.  I had these built by a good friend who owns such a shop:

Two suggestion for you. First, check out second hand stores. You very well may strike gold at one. I got both of my display cabinets from our local thrift stores for under $60.00. Another option you can ry is to find any stores going out of business and/or remodeling that may want to unload their old display cases. I hope you find something because, like you, there is no way that I'd be getting rid of my cat.

You can buy individual plexiglass display cases, or even make them from sheets of plexiglass available at many hobby or hardware stores. Display cabinets would be a great option. Lacking that, maybe some nails or broken glass spread around on the shelf. :-)

I may just have to visit the local lumberyard and pick up the stuff to make my own. Heck, I've built some decent (translation: useable, if not stylish) things in the past, no reason I cant do the same now.

Good will stores sometimes have curio cabinets for sale very cheap.

I took over one of the kids bedrooms after he went to college and put a screen door on the room. Keeps the cats out (we have two and had a dog at the time too). They sit there and watch though.

Jim 

The problem I ran into with trying to buy used display cabinets from  stores closing or remodeling is there is lots of competition for these cabinets that drives the price up. And I'm not talking other modelers. All kinds of collectors from dolls to sports cards to memorabilia use these to display their hobby just like we do.

One quick relatively easy and inexpensive thing I have done is to acquire a sheet of glass or plexiglass and attach it across the front of an existing bookcase. This at least keeps the dust and probing fingers off. How you get access to the inside, light it up, or finish it off so it doesn't look so ghetto depends on the bookcase and how much time and effort you wanna put into it.

I believe that IKEA has many reasonable priced cabinets that are suitable

Hi :

   I go to Wal-Mart and find a boxed cabinet that will fill my needs .Then I go to Home Depot and buy sheet acrylic then Hobby Lobby for the piano style hinges .Take all that home and assemble .My cat ain't going anywhere ether ! She looks through the acrylic and just wishes she could get inside and investigate .

Garage sales are good places to find used display case type furniture.

I have three black  Iron framed display cases from Ikea and were very affordable. I will suggest that if you can build your own, then that would be the better option as you can build it to your specifications. Once my son moves out in the next couple of months, I plan on moving my hobby room there since is bigger and I will be able to have more display space, not to mention more closet space for storage. I will then build me a nice med sized display cabinet. After building a large one in my previous house, I discovered that two medium sized ones are more manageable and easier to move around than one big heavy monster.

Ernie, I found out quickly that one can never have enough display space.  I had my second cabinet built after the first was too crowded for any more models.  By the time I spread the "herd" out to the second cabinet, I realized that I would have that one full to the point of crowded before too long as well.  Of course, that's predicated on getting planes built, which has been a problem lately for me, lol.  

I agree with you that smaller cabinets are easier to deal with than really big ones.  If I had the space, I'd love to have yet another display built just like the previous two.  But, I don't even have room for another gun safe, let alone a display cab.  Oh well, please pass the cheese to go with my "whine".

Gary

There is a company or two that advertise custom display cases in the back of FSM magazine.  But I imagine this would be quite expensive.

At least with planes, you can use the airspace above each one to suspend another one. :-)

Another possibility is old entertainment centers, the ones that were made for analog TVs. Some were very fancy, and they are now obsolete (i.e; Cheap).

Mike

Gary

Those are real nice cases your friend made for you. I know what you mean about running out of space. I have a 1/24 scale George to build and a 1/72 scale Type IX plus tons of others........oh my, pretty soon I will need another room to display things!