Scorching Weekend (the weather was ok too!)

In an effort to help return the house to something more resembling a home, than each room a workshop or dumping ground, I've really cracked on the last 7 days and its now beginning to pay dividends.

After the 'hinge-incident', the front of the cab is now looking really good - so the next job was a keyboard drawer. I font some scrap plywood and set about fashioning a frame to affix to the MDF front. For some reason, this all took an age to complete - probably due to me faffing around checking all the measurements etc as I had no plans for this and was making it up as I went along...

The Keyboard Drawer

I tried to make this pretty basic, as I figured it wouldnt be used much (if at all) and it also would not really be seen. I made some MDF battons and glued and screwed to some plywood and then to the MDF front of the draw, leaving something like this (left) - which is pretty solid!

(This is the bottom of the drawer by the way!)

Thoughts then turned to how to make it run inside. I tried to get some plastic runners like you get in kitchen furniture, but couldnt find any locally - so I had to improvise and make some MDF battons covered in a hard plastic finish - this will allow the drawer to run smoothly.

This actually works ok, but I now realise that the drawer is massively front heavy, so will have to fix that with another batton above where the drawer will run to fix it in place - the battons are fixed to the cab with glue and 1.1/4 screws.

Now with the drawer in place and the new front (painted by Claire - far better than the paint jobs I've done so far!) we are looking in good shape - its looking like an Arcade Cabinet!!


Let There Be Sound!

My thoughts now turned to the speakers - I've been waiting for some Labtec speakers to come into stock at Argos due to the fact they (are cheap) have a remote control on a wire for volume and power - allowing easy access to wherever I decide to mount it. I finally got them on Saturday and set about immediately destroying them - which feels weird when you've just taken something out of the box!!

From This ........ >>> ................... To This!

Claire had previously painted the speaker shelf (which I had finished drilling the 'sound hole' patterns) and it looks really good! Will mount the speakers when the paint has fully dried.

Control Panel

Late on Sunday morning, I was about ready to pack in for the day and do some proper work, but I thought I'd make a start on the control panel box (where the joysticks, buttons etc will go).

It was hot and I'd had about enough so wasnt looking forward to it, but it was one of those jobs which went really well and I had finished it in about 15 minutes! So I excitedly dashed upstairs to put it in place and witness the closest I have been yet to completing this project!




















Thats about it for now - its too f**king hot!!

I've had a great suprise from my Dad who sent me up a present of gold (or a cheque) and I can now go ahead and order all my control panel parts - so big THANKS Dad! All I need now is a 27" screen, all the artwork, a new fast PC etc etc etc... I'll send you an invoice :-)

Peace out till next time...