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...

The doors are coming off!

Its been a few days of frustration since I last posted. In that time, I've started putting the finishing touches to the cab - including affixing the back of cab and cutting the speaker shelf to the right size.

I've also been looking at a solution for the front of the cab. This is quite a large (heavy) section - which some people hinge as a big door - whilst others fix the whole section to the front of the cab with a hole in the middle for a coin door.

Its the hinges that have caused the first real DIY headache on the project. If people do hinge, then they normally use what are known as 'European Hinges' - which are large metal hinges, sunk into the wood that you would most probably have on your Kitchen cabinets. I did not feel competent enough to start drilling out large holes in the side of cabinet though as I felt I may go through the other side - ruining what I had done so far.

I looked at a variety of hinges and finally settled on some 'hidden hinges' - which when I got home and gauged the weight of the door, realised they would probably just rip out of the sides...

THE BAD IDEA

Hmmm... in a flash of madness inspiration, I decided to slice the big panel into 3 pieces. One at the top for a keyboard drawer and the remaining 2 pieces to be smaller hinged doors which the hinges would support. Ok - good... or not. My door hanging expertise leaves a lot to be desired and after plenty of swearing, I ended up with this abomination...

Damn, that sucks. By deviating from the plan, have I started to get ahead of myself? What was I thinking - am I some sort of 'Carpenter Freestylist?' Luckily I have enough spare MDF left and decided to trash the doors and think of a new solution.

THE NEW IDEA

So a new plan was needed - I decided to go back to one solid piece (but still with a keyboard drawer) and have it affix to a frame by - dont laugh - velcro... I'm sure this is a good idea, yes, this is a good idea, there is no way that this is a bad idea.

So I cut the wood again tonight and I think its going to be ok. This will also be stronger as I am making a frame for the panel to sit in that will be glued and screwed across the sides of the cab front. Also, you may be able to make out a thinner piece of baton that will sit between the new lower panel and the keyboard drawer space - on here, I will affix some 'Credit Buttons' to mimic the coin buttons on a real cabinet.



HOLE-Y SPEAKERS

The final piece of this bloated update is that I have started work on a speaker shelf idea. Most people (i think) just cut a space in the shelf to put the speakers over and then cover the hole the other side with a grill or mesh to make it look nice. I had an idea of just having holes for the sound to come through in the wood and whilst browsing the arcade forum I found this solution which is perfect.


Drilling the holes is a boring and arm aching job, but I think its going to be worth it once painted!

Thats all for now (folks) ...

Arcadius Erectus.

As a picture speaks a thousand words (and that I am very busy!), here are some pics and not a lot of waffle from this weekends efforts.

Its a pretty good moment when you actually start putting one of these together. Looking back at all the old pics, to start creating something like this from 3 sheets of heavy wood feels pretty good!













Here is a better view.

There will be a little bit of filler needed in some areas, but on the whole, its actually not far off. And a nice bonus is that when we stood it up and stuck a spirit level on it, its pretty much even all over!! Yeah!

Just a real quickie for today...

The paint arrived yesterday! After spending days trying to find a retailer that sold 'semi-gloss' Black paint to no avail, one last web search took me to "The Green Shop" who sell natural products.

I was a bit hesistant at first as the paint contains no dangerous products - so no lead or any other chemicals normally found in paint - its all made from natural goods! The finish is superb though, the paint went on very nicely, no fumes and now its dry, it really looks the part!

All this means that I can now finally assemble the cabinet in my room and the construction of the main cabinet is now over!

More pictures to come on Saturday of a full erection - stay tuned for those!

Putting away the tools... for now!

(This update is a day late!...)

Though the forecast was for more wet stuff, the skies stayed (relatively) blue and the rain held off - so with a 10am prompt start I was off and running trying to tie up all the odds and ends.


First up, some more minor cuts and trims -plus a bit of sanding to fix some off sizes. So far so good... quick, crack on! Whipped out the router for the first time to router the edges of the cabinet. This is to allow the 'T-Molding' plastic edging to slot into the groove I have made (right).

With all these little jobs finished off, I cut up some scrap wood into 2" x 2" lengths and set about making the supports for the cabinet.






This was pretty straight forward stuff - all about getting the measurements and angles right, heating up the glue gun and then drilling/screwing the wood to the sides of the cabinet.









Doesnt sound like alot, but it was a good days work and left me pretty tired - probably due to me racing with one eye on the skies. Anyway, everything wood wise is finished for the time being.

Next up... painting!

Make mine a smoothy...

What a miserable wet day! Due to the lost time in the week due to the weather, I was eager to have a good weekend - but it rained on and off for 99% of the day.

In the small windows of opportunity I did manage to grasp (in between doing 'real work' of webdesign and trips to B&Q) when the rain ceased, I busted out a new tool - the Palm Sander!

This genius little device was the last piece of my arsenal in the assault on cabinet hill (christ that sounds mental!). Anyway, I used the sander to finish off all the pieces and match up any symetrical parts that were not quite exact. Nice tool and again, for about £7.00, shows you dont have to go out and spend loads on tools.

So, with all the bits ready to go, I was about to take the plunge and start putting it all together. Aided by my trusty assistant Claire, we set about lining the pieces up, drilling and screwing together as much as we could.






It turned out to be fairly straight forward and though pieces may be a 1/16th of an inch out here and there, on the whole, I'm very please with how the pieces of the cab are working out.

We had to call a halt to todays proceedings though as I was starving and we also need to cut some scrap wood. Hopefully if the weather improves tomorrow, I can finish the building, take it all apart again, router the edges and prepare for painting! Pretty easy...

Stay tuned for more fun soon!

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...