I finally have done it. I am finally building a shop to hobby out of. It is 14x28' and fully appointed. The building is up and electric wiring is done. The insulation and panneling goes up this week and I start working on the benches next week. For bench tops I am trying to decide between Maple or some other dense top material that I can then formica. I hesitate to use 2"maple top 10' long ,25" wide. I dont want to drill a lot of unnecessary holes in it for mounting the two presses I use. I bought a RCBS mounting plate but it does not have the correct hole spacing for the Forster co-ax press I use mostly. I also use the Redding Ultramag press for bullet pulling/swaging/ and full length resizing of the big African rounds.

Question: does anyone make a slide in press holder or universal mounting plate that I can perminantly mount on the bench? The Thompson Tool Holder is no longer available as they went out of business. Is there another option commercially available?
ss

Attach a 1" thick plywood plate to each of your three presses and then make one set of bolt holes in your bench that any of the three presses can fit to.

I wouldn't use a solid wood top under a Plastic laminate surface material. The solid wood will move with moisture and temp changes and the surface material will delaminate fairly soon.

I have a hobby shop that is 20x24 in my back yard also. My bench tops are two thicknesses of 3/4" plywood screwed and glued together, then plastic laminate (formica) over that.
It makes a great surface to work on, and the 2x4 frame I built the cabinets out of make it strong enough to pound on if need be with serious hammers, mallets, and whatever happens to be handy. Also, you can scrape glue over runs, and other finishes off the surface material pretty easily and get right back to a nice smooth surface. One of these days, I'll also laminate my work/assembly table, which also has a 1 1/2" plywood top.
As for mounting a press or two, I would stop worrying about it and just do it. If you do it right, the holes will be fairly clean and not show up much. Or, you could just leave the presses mounted permanently and not see the holes until you move out.
On my work benches, I've got so many tools, gunstocks, plans, and various stuff setting around that you probably couldn't see the mounting holes if you tried. - Sheister

RCBS makes a tool holder that fits most of their hole patterns for all their tools. I have one I got with a bunch of equipment I took off of a guy. I was going to use it but decided on a better alternative when I built my shop the last couple of years.

I'll suggest my alternative as a better one if your hobby area is basically for guns an nonwoodworking hobbies. What I did is make the bench tops out of a "sandwich" of two 3/4" plywood layers with 1/2" MDF in the middle. I topped the plywood with 1/8" HDF glued down with rubber cement. This enables changing the benchtop easily should it get too beat up years downstream. I did this before in my wood shop and that has worked out well.

I made cutouts in the benchtop 5"X5" on the plywood and 6"X6" on the sandwich MDF. I made similar plates in reverse to enable sliding the sandwich into the cutouts. I made about 8 removable plates to which I mounted several presses, a timmer and a powder measure, plus some spares to enable dismounting all the equipment and sliding the blanks into the bench top to facilitate use of the entire bench with nothing in the way. I actually made two cutouts so that I have the flexibility of mounting two presses, or one press or a combination of other loading equiment. I can change presses or convert to the plain bench in a matter of seconds and it's solid and functional. Cheaper than maple or butcher block, which I also considered.

I'll have a digital camera by the end of the week and if I can learn how to use it, I'll post, or send you pictures of what I did. If you by chance kept my address from those 404 brass swaps, send me postage and I'll send you the RCBS plate. Alternatively I'll send you the pictures of my reloading set up with the top as described. That was the best idea I've had about anything in a long time and it has worked out super for me.

on you table/benchtops, I am going to agree with the fellas already

1: MDF.. cheap cheap, fairly hard, and it's easy to work with... get 2 or 3 3/4" sheets, liquids nails and a couple screws... My own benchtop is 2 3/4" CD plywood, but that was back when it was cheap

2: formica over that, if you like

3: i'll see your plate, and go one further... have (make) a local shop make you from 3/8 alum plate, an upper and lower mounting plate.. and have the lower have a 1" water pipe flat flange.. and then use the water pipe (with a threaded union) to give you a foot to brace the press to the floor with

jeffe