Back on it.

After praying for rain for the last 6 weeks, due to bad hayfever - and the gods mostly abiding, I've spent the last 2 days praying for sunlight!

The murky Lincolnshire skies have not been kind to the garden arcade cabinet builder and 2 evenings of showers have brought a semi-halt to proceedings.

Though we had an absolutely torrential downpour about 4pm today, the rain held off this evening and I was straight outside after work to set up the tools. On todays agenda was re-cutting the miss-cut control panel side pieces, taking 10" off of my base supports, cutting some 45-degree angles for the first time and trying out the router for the very first time!

But first delivery news... I ordered a router bit from a company called "Rutlands" in the UK, who promise 'Next Day Delivery on orders placed before 4pm'. Well, I ordered at 7am on Monday morning and obviously my understanding of 'Next Day' is different to theirs as it arrived this morning - that speedy delivery cost £5.95 (would have been 90p with Royal Mail)... still, putting Rutlands to shame were the ever faithul 'Play-Asia', who although sound like a Thai Mail Order Bride service, are actually suppliers of all things gaming from the Far East.

Only ordered last Thursday on a standard delivery, my LCD Light Gun arrived today, so thats very pleasing! Heres a YouTube vid (not mine) of it in action... should be fun!



Anyway... all the woodwork went very well today. Took me 30 mins to figure out how to operate the Router! Bloody thing... sorted it in the end and did some testing which went very well (the Router is used to cut a thin slot in the edge of the cabinet wood. Into the slot will fit some plastic molding finsh, called T-Molding). I will Router all the cabinet nearer the weekend.

So then I started the first part of construction finally! The base of the cabinet was assembled today. On the left, you can see how this was done. 4 thin slices of MDF are cut to the sizes you see here, then the edges drawn round with a pencil. Pilot holes are then drilled into intervals where you have marked the wood.

Once enough holes are drilled, the supports are attached using the hot-glue gun and held in place for a minute or two.


Once secure, the whole thing is flipped over and pilot holes drilled back through the base and supports enabling 2" Dry-Wall screws to be used to hold everything together, like this...

Seems very secure and it feels good to be actually building something now!

Next jobs are to put wheels on this base, rout the cabinet sides and then attach the sides to the base... will need some help - "CLAIRREEEEEEEE"...

Till next time...