Ask a model maker what the hardest part of the job is and you might expect an answer about machining tolerances or paint. Just as often, the answer is the last step: getting a delicate, one-of-a-kind object across the country — or the ocean — in one piece. A project isn't finished when the model looks perfect on the bench. It's finished when the client opens the container and everything is exactly right. Here's how we make sure of it.
Shipping is a design input, not an afterthought
Packing gets planned at the start of a build, not the end — because how a model will travel changes how it should be built. A stationary lobby display can be engineered as delicately as the design demands. A trade show model that will be packed, trucked, unpacked, and handled dozens of times a year needs different materials, stronger fastenings, and mounting points designed in from the first CAD drawing. Sometimes the shipping requirements drive the model's design rather than the other way around — it's one of the questions we settle before the build begins, and crating is spelled out as a line item in every quote.
Hard cases with carved foam
For small and mid-size models — and almost anything that travels repeatedly — the workhorse is the hard shell case: Pelican and similar cases with wheels, handles, and watertight seals, from briefcase size up to cases that have swallowed a seven-foot model. Inside, our model makers hand-carve foam beds shaped to the model and its parts, the way a camera nests into its case. Every void is accounted for, so nothing moves no matter how the case is handled. For the most delicate pieces, the model first gets its own custom foam-and-board enclosure, which then nests into the foam-lined case — two layers of protection.
Custom crates for everything else
Larger and more intricate models get wooden crates, built in the shop, each one as custom as the model going into it. Some crates have interior shelving a flat-based model slides into and screws down onto. Curvier or more fragile builds get anchored at the base and cocooned in a protective shell. The crate is a build project in its own right, designed by the people who know exactly where the model is strong and where it isn't.
And for the truly oversized: models travel on skids and pallets, get bolted through wooden blocks to a truck bed, or ride with us personally. Local deliveries sometimes go by courier, and some models we simply drive to the client — whatever the model's size and fragility actually call for.
Carriers, damage, and honest talk
Most models ship with the major carriers, and the truth is that no amount of packing skill makes a shipping company gentle. It's rare, but a model occasionally arrives with damage in spite of everything. When it happens, it gets fixed — fast. The people who built the model know precisely how to repair it, whether that means a return trip to the shop or a model maker going on-site with tools in hand. We've repaired and re-delivered a model within days when a client's event depended on it. Frustrating? Absolutely. Unsolvable? Never yet.
Built around the show calendar
For trade show models, the container isn't packaging — it's equipment. It will be reused across a season of shows, packed and unpacked by booth crews who aren't model makers, so it has to make correct packing obvious: shaped foam that only fits one way, labeled parts, no guesswork. Delivery gets planned backward from the show date with margin built in, because show floors don't reschedule. We've never missed a client's show date, and the packing engineering described on this page is a large part of why.
The last thing we build for you
Every model leaves this shop inside something designed as carefully as the model itself. If your project has a date it absolutely must make, tell us that first — the whole build gets planned around it.