Monthly Archives: January 2009

So, was able to make some progress this last weekend. A little less than I would have liked, but progress nonetheless.

First off, here is the pic of the marquee issue I described before. Ended up buying some black foam insulation tape on a whim at home depot but think it might be too thick. I will do some searching for thinner stuff online for the next time I go down.

Got my shelf brackets mounted.

Cut a hole for my DataPro USB cover.

Tried to improve air flow by cutting some holes in the back of the speaker shelf.

Got the control panel glued together. These pics are before I went to town sanding it down however, it nearly looks like one piece of wood in some places now.

Got my back door installed with hinge, magnetic door stop and cool chrome handle.

Also got the front door hinged and installed. Sadly was not able to get the surface bolt mounted before I had to leave.

So what is left to do? Finish installing the surface bolt and sanding the control panel and cabinet. Cutting the holes for the primary and secondary control panels, mounting them and hinging the primary. Fixing screw holes with Bondo, sanding and then finally painting. I am guessing (hoping) this takes me a couple more weekends or maybe 1 more long stay. After that, it should hopefully be all wiring and electrical.

After a roughly 7.5 hour drive (!!) from Seattle to Vancouver, WA before Christmas I found the 2nd time around was not as productive as I had hoped. While I was able to get a majority of the cabinet put together, by the end of my time off I still had more things to do and painting hadn’t even started yet. I can definitely see how these projects can take people much longer than they expected.  

Pics might appear complete, but still need to attach some shelf brackets to support the monitor shelf, install hinges for both the front coin door and an additional door I cut for the back and get started actually putting the controller panel together (pieces are already cut).

One thing I will need to figure out is how to brace this thing to become better aligned. Due to the ground in the garage I am building this not being entirely level I think the sides of my cabinet ended up slightly off. The problem this is causing is that my front coin door is not fitting exactly. It would fine if I could just screw it into the sides and force it to fit, but with it needing to hinge it will have to be braced some other way. I tried to do this slightly with the piece below the control panel, but that didn’t really work.

I also encountered a problem cutting my lexan marquee, where I overcompensated on making the width slightly small so that it would have an easier time fitting into the cabinet. There is currently a roughly 1/16″ or so gap on each side of the marquee, which I assume will be pretty noticeable with a bright light shining from behind it. Was kind of my kicking myself about that one, but was thinking some sort of thin black rubber on the either side might provide a good tight fit. I have no idea where the best place to get a piece of thin rubber like that would be acquired, or if another method might work better.

So overall, it was a productive holiday, but I think it is going to take 2-3 weekend trips to actually finish off the woodworking portion of this project. Pics are below…