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memphissfinest

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Have been looking for a good solution for displaying my Tumbler and Delorean in the past few months down in my basement mancave but nothing I saw really fit what I was looking for. Got a few quotes locally and of course they were outrageous so I decided to build my own based on a picture I found on google that I thought looked amazing. Ended up being extremely easy. Was concerned on the welding of the acrylic pieces but even that ended up being a piece of cake. Just needed a second set of hands to hold the acrylic pieces as I welded them together. Add in some led's for dramatic effect and I think it came out pretty good. Couple pics below:

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Wow what a great solution! This will be great for the Ecto once it gets here. Did you use 1/4 panes? Can you share from where and also what you used for the base?
 
When you say weld, what method did you use? Well done.
 
Wow what a great solution! This will be great for the Ecto once it gets here. Did you use 1/4 panes? Can you share from where and also what you used for the base?

Here is the original plan I did in AutoCAD to get an idea of what I wanted to do before I got started:

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Pretty much followed this drawing except I made a few changes. Instead of using 2x4's for the base I ended up using 2x2 to have it sit lower. I also didn't route a trench for the acrylic to sit in on the base. The acrylic just sits directly on top of the base as it made it much easier for me to get it on and off if I want to.

I sourced the acrylic from a local company here in Cleveland, OH. They are 5 pieces of clear 0.25" acrylic and 1 0.25" piece of white acrylic that the models sit on. Came out to around $275 I believe for all the acrylic and $15 for the wood for the base. Much cheaper than the $2000 quotes I was getting.

I learned during the process that acrylic is not glued together, you actually melt the plastic pieces and weld them together via a special liquid. Can get this liquid from Amazon. It was cheap and there a lot of videos on Youtube that show how to do it but basically, you hold the two pieces of acrylic together and use a syringe filled with the acrylic weld to fill the gap between the two pieces. By capillary action the acrylic weld will melt the two pieces together after a few seconds.

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The base is just 2x2's that I mitered the corners with my miter saw and joined via wood glue and screws. Then I painted it matte black with matte clear on top of the black. The acrylic top just rests right on top. It is heavy enough that it doesn't move at all (in fact I need help lifting it off and back on if I need to change the display). Anyone attempting could route a trench in there for the top to sit in while on the base but without a workshop, I couldn't achieve the level of precision I believe I needed to make that happen.

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Once everything was done, I used my orbital buffer to buff out any imperfections in the acrylic and give it a good shine.
 
Hey thats super cool, I really like the LED lighting!
 
Thanks! Not to mention it was very easy to do. Total time was only a few hours spread out over a couple of days

Did you consider using a LED panel? photoglow.com can make them up to 48"x32". I have a much smaller one but the big advantage is that you don't see the LED light hotspots ... its a uniform even white glow. Similar to what you would see with a FL lamp slide sorter light box.
 
Did you consider using a LED panel? photoglow.com can make them up to 48"x32". I have a much smaller one but the big advantage is that you don't see the LED light hotspots ... its a uniform even white glow. Similar to what you would see with a FL lamp slide sorter light box.

Hmm, I’ll take a look at that
 
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