Getting it Upstairs

Before I left UNT, I managed to rope two friends into promising to help me get this cabinet upstairs (thanks Chris and Drew!).
It was of course a mad rush home on Friday after midterms, and I spend the first few days just relaxing a little bit and also brought the cabinet into the garage, letting us avoid airplane wings on the big move-in day. I also worked on something else that I will get to in the next post.
 On Monday, Chris and Drew came over, and so it began. It was pretty much a nightmare trying to get it inside, as it barely fit through every doorway we had to go through. Once we got to the stairs though, is where it got really fun. I was at the top, and Chris and Drew were at the bottom; this was probably not the ideal arrangement in retrospect because Chris and I are close to the same height, and Drew is pretty darn short. Anyway, we managed to get it up to the landing, at which point, we all had the "What in the world are we doing?" moment. Once it was at the landing, we realized that we didn't have enough room to turn it to make the second corner, and nor was the stairway wide enough to take it up sideways. After deliberating for quite some time, we came up with the only possible solution (still haven't thought of a different one), and I wish so much that we had taken some pictures; it was surely a sight to behold! First, we laid they cabinet down on its back, and Drew crawled inside (told you he was small). There is a space in the back near the bottom if you remember, that's where Drew was. Keep in mind that the cabinet is 27.5" wide, and we probably had about 30" if that to work with; the clearances were approximately the same for the length as well. Once Drew was inside, we slowly and carefully proceeded to turn the cabinet upside down. Drew started by lifting it from the inside, since believe it or not, he had the most room at the moment. Once the bottom was a few feet off of the ground, Chris was able to get underneath, Drew got out, and they kept pushing it to upside down. I was on the other side, slowly moving it towards them so it wouldn't hit the wall. Now keep in mind that this cabinet weighs at least 200lbs, and is immensely bulky. Just go back to any picture of it if you need a refresher of the size of this. After this, we were able to maneuver the cabinet somewhat easily, if you discount the whole don't-let-the-top-heavy-200lb-arcade-machine-fall-over-and-destroy-something-and/or-itself factor. Anyways, we maneuvered the cabinet to the rail post, lifted the cabinet over the post and got it in line with the second flight of stairs. After managing to navigate the tight space to get on top to drag it up, we manged to get it up to the floor of my room.Getting it into the room was the easy bit, and and I slid the TV in, just to see kind of how it will look when it is done. Luckily, I did take a picture of that:

I think it looks great even just like that.

And the painting is done (again)!

I really hope so anyways! I put the last coat on the cabinet the other day, so now I just need the paint to cure. I also painted the control panel; I only had to put one more coat of paint on the top, because I decided to put a piece of polycarbonate (Lexan) on the top to protect it. I came to this decision because I wasn't sure how I wanted to not only make it easy to clean since it is white after all, but also make it durable enough to withstand the constant rubbing/touching that might make the paint wear through to the MDF. The problem I have been running into is that the only size big enough for the control panel is 36" x 48"! I can probably use the extra for the bezel for the TV, but it's pretty flexible, so I'm not sure how well that will work.

What I Did Friday

So last Friday, after I was done with classes for the day, I drove back home to (finally!) work on the cabinet some more. On the way home, I stopped at Home Depot to buy a scraper.

Wrong tool for the job!

Once I brought it home, I started working, and I did have the foresight to use it in an inconspicuous spot. I'm glad I did, because it immediately started gouging the MDF. I tried other tools including a block plane and a card scraper. The block plane took strips of paint off the likes of which I have only seen from a finely tuned smoothing plane, but only for about five passes; after that it wouldn't do anything. The card scraper didn't do much of anything. I took the scraper back to HD, and bought the correct one, along with some CitriStrip (paint stripper made for acrylic latex paint), a plastic scraper (CitriStrip recommended it), and a set of painter's pyramids (actually tetrahedrons).
 Once I finally got back to the house, I got cracking!

I started out by trying a test spot in the inside of the cabinet, and applied it with a paper towel. After I did that, and that worked successfully, I started on the rest of the cabinet. For the first side, I used a paper towel; once I finished that side, I decided that the paper towel was too much work.

Swirls don't matter, but work does!

Once again, I went to HD and got a 4" paint brush. That worked a lot better, and sped up the process immensely.

Much better!

 I spent until midnight scraping paint off. I still wasn't done, but decided to wait until morning to finish it. I had a guitar lesson back in Denton at 1:00, so I had to finish it pretty quickly. I ended up getting up at 11:00, so I didn't have much time to finish it, but I did manage.

Mostly done. Also, the scraper.

This was a very nasty job, and I hope I never have to do it again. This is definitely a lesson that a job is worth doing correctly the first time, even if it is harder; because now, I have to do that same job that I didn't want to do, except this time after doing that same job I don't like.

Reconsidering Stripping

Although I am still at college, I still think about this project quite often. Right now, I am once again reconsidering stripping the paint, and I'll tell you why.
To start with, as soon as I put the first coat on, I wasn't very happy with it; as soon as it dried, it felt  rubbery, weak, like I could easily bring it back to the white primer by scratching it with my nails. I ignored this voice in my mind, and kept adding coats, until it was as black as it should be. It was soon after this that I had my wisdom teeth pulled. This kept me from hauling it upstairs, as I am sure you already well know. So there it has been sitting, in my shop, since then. I did put the t-molding on, and strangely enough, that seems to be the main thing holding me back from stripping the paint. I say it's strange because that has probably been the easiest part of this entire build. The other thing that has been keeping me at bay is probably the greatest asset of them all. And that is college. What I mean by that, is that if I do end up repainting, I will use an oil-based epoxy. This takes about 24 hours for each coat to cure, and I don't see why 168 hours (7*24) would be any worse. The implications of this would be that I could come home and apply one coat of paint once a week. By the time I am done with this semester of college, and am home for the winter, everything will be painted. And depending on how ambitious I am, maybe even upstairs in my room, or even totally completed; that sure would be cool!

The T-Molding

As I said in my last post, I gave up on trying to drill the holes in the control panel. But I felt like I had to do something, so I installed the t-molding. It was a fairly straightforward process. All I used was a mallet and a box knife. The mallet is to hit the molding into place. The knife is for cutting the part that goes into the MDF, the | part of the T, if that makes sense. If it's an outside angle/radius, you have to cut some away, to basically keep it from running into itself, think about a miter, except it doesn't have to be precise. With an inside angle/radius, you have a couple of different options. The first is to just cut the molding like you did with the outside angle. The other option is to just cut slots in it, and since they are spreading out, they won't run into each other. Honestly, I went back and forth between the two. Another thing that came in handy was a piece of wood with a 45 degree angel on it. This was great for hammering the molding into corners.

After I got it in on both sides, I realized that I may have damaged the paint job slightly. It shouldn't be too bad, since my room isn't super bright, and should hide the flaws well enough.
Another thing I realized, and a lesson for you all, is that if you decide to make a MAME cabinet, make sure that the edge that the t-molding is going on is smooth. I thought I could get away with not working too hard on it, after all, I figured that the molding would cover most of the flaws. I was wrong. It's not super noticeable, but it is there: just a slight variation, almost a ripple.

Status Update

Just because I haven't been posting doesn't mean I haven't been working on it.  June 29 - July 1 I was gone at the college orientation, but I did manage to put a coat of primer on before I left. Even before that, I drilled out as much of the control panel as I could, but I'll get into that later. As soon as I got home, my friend Wesley arrived from Oklahoma, and we worked on it a lot, but we were having so much fun I didn't get a chance to blog about it. To start with, we put more coats of paint on. The primer was white, and I wanted the cabinet to be black, so we ended up putting 2 coats on. We had some paint left, so we added another coat on the side that will be seen when walking into my room.

Here it is painted. That's my elbow sticking out.

We also spent a lot of time on the software aspect. We were originally going to go with Windows 2000, but we were having so much trouble trying to get it to boot up to do a fresh install, we gave up on that computer and went with Windows XP. We are going to use MAMEWah for the frontend. A really cool thing that Wes did was modify the Windows XP splash/loading screen to have the MAME logo instead, so this way when you boot up you will see a MAME logo instead of Windows XP.
We didn't do much with the controls other than a couple of things. One thing we did was hook up the spinner. This was the easiest thing to do since it just hooks up via USB. It is recognized as a mouse, so we had to configure both the frontend and the actual emulator to accept mouse input. We also visited my neighbor to get some advice. He sometimes wires up airplane control panels, so we figured he would be a good person to ask about wiring. One thing he told us was that we should use different colors of wire for the controls, to distinguish the different buttons, and make different bundles to rout around. He showed us a connector, and when he told us we didn't have to have them all in a sheath, as his were, but when I saw that, I remembered that my dad had a big spool of Cat5e ethernet cable. It will work great, since the biggest number of buttons we will have is 6, and and Cat5e has 8 wires, so we will have 1 left over, assuming I run all the ground together, which it will be eventually anyway. We also worked on the speakers. I had a set of computer speakers in my shop, so we took them apart, and hooked them up to the 4" speakers we had. Also for convenience sake, we used hot glue and glued the amplifier onto one of the speakers, simply to make it easier when installing them.
July 7-14 I was in Florida visiting my uncle. We did some woodworking, watched the shuttle launch, went to the beach, and when I got back, the paint was dry. Finally!
I didn't do much work when I got back, because I had a gig that night, then a weekly acting camp that I nearly forgot about while laying around recovering, and then the very next day (Sunday), I was off to UNT for a jazz combo camp. Once I got home Friday, there wasn't much time, and the next day, I was off to the acting camp again, and then spent most of the rest of the day at Half-Price Books, and ended up with some good CDs. Monday I mainly recovered from jazz camp, and also went to the consultation to have my wisdom teeth pulled. Tuesday I finally dragged myself back out to the shop to try out the drill guide that I got, since my drill press isn't deep enough for all the holes in the control panel. I bought the Lee Valley guide, because I know that they usually have excellent quality, but this was terrible! There was so much play in it that it is nowhere near close to drill press accuracy, even a crummy one. I am sending it back, and after doing some research online, I am actually going with the Craftsman brand. It got the best reviews, so I figure it's more or less the lesser of x evils. Of course, this morning I had my wisdom teeth pulled, so I'm pretty much out of commission for at least a week. Luckily, thanks to the wonders of teh interwebs I can order the drill guide so it will be here and ready when I am.

Still Going Strong(ish)

It wasn't my original intention to only blog once a week, but that appears to be what is happening. Anyways, like last week, I have been working on it.

Here it is with the front, top, and diagonal attached. There really isn't a whole lot to say about this, except I did cut some angles to make it fit together better. The angle in front should help when I install the marquee and backlight.

 This is the "ventilation slot" I was talking about. If I had thought about it better, I might have cut a slot for T-molding to make it look nicer, but it is in the back after all, so it probably doesn't make a difference.

This is the template I used to route the holes, and it worked fairly well.

I did manage to get a TV finally. I had been looking on Craigslist, and maybe it's better when you want to pay for something, but people were so flaky, I probably sent out about 20 emails, and got back maybe about 3, with one being spam, and the others saying it was already taken. I eventually gave up and went to Goodwill. That's what I should have done from the beginning. I spent way too much time trying to save what turned out to be $25, and I really needed it to keep going. If anything, I actually went a little overboard with trying to find the best deal, and ended up with a 27" screen!

Sorry about the worse than usual picture quality, but anyway, this set me up for the next step.

This was to screw the TV shelf in place, but I wasn't sure where to locate the the shelf. When I got the TV, I was able to measure it, and figure that out. I decided to have it at a right angle to the slant on front, so hopefully the TV will be parallel with the bezel. Before I screwed it in, I screwed another piece of MDF to the bottom, kind of like I did the base, to help support the TV. You can kind of see it in the following picture.

 

I still didn't completely trust it, so I decided to glue cleats to the edges. At this point, I don't think it will budge at all.

I also decided to glue a cleat to the top of the shelf. This is to make sure that the TV doesn't slide back, since it will be at an angle. It should be plenty strong enough.

Around this time is when things started to fall apart a little bit. I had originally planned for the speakers to be 3" from the edges. This meant that the opposite side would be approximately 7" from the edge. That was before I took the bezel into account. I realized that if I kept the holes where they were, I would have to either cut out a place in the bezel for the speakers, or have no bezel at all. Both of these options were unacceptable of course, so I had to create new holes in the board. To do this of course, I also had to make a new routing template. Luckily, I was able to squeeze out what I needed from the same board I had used for the original measurements. The new holes were 1" from either edge.

 I got that routed, and also managed  to rout out part of my bench cookie in the act. It looks a little bit sad, but I learned my lesson, and hopefully will be able to keep from doing that again.

 Anyway, I did that, and cut the bevel, just like the last time, and screwed it in. That probably would have worked, but I have not mastered the fine art of drilling a straight hole yet apparently. I had also been using a bit that was too small, which had been working fine, although it has cracked the MDF slightly. All these combined problems caused the board to basically split. I tried to fix it by watering down some wood glue and injecting it into the hole, and that worked to make it stronger, but I couldn't clamp it good enough to more or less stuff the MDF back in. I eventually gave up and made another board.  Anyway, the picture is the only really good way to show what I am talking about with the splitting and blowout.

 You can see the more or less stain from the glue. You can also see the holes alternating sides. This is from my less than perfect drilling.
The sequence for making the second board is more or less the same, so I won't get into that too much, but I will note a few things I did differently the second time around. To start with, since the holes were already drilled in the side, I took a ruler, and marked a straight line centered on the holes, and then measured 3/8" down to put the board precisely in the middle. I also used a larger drill bit. For those keeping score, I went from a #40 to a #34. Both of these things helped keep the MDF from splitting. I also used 1 1/2" screws near the holes for the speakers, instead of 1 3/4", which is what I am using for the rest of the project.

The next thing I did was screw on the two back pieces. Also pretty straightforward. All I did was measure in 1/2" from the edge on the inside, and 7/8" from the edge on the outside. Clamp in place and drill, countersink, and screw. Done.

I also filled in the holes/countersinks with woodfiller. Both of the cans of Plastic Wood that we had were dried up, and my idea of MDF sawdust and wood glue didn't work as well as I hoped. So today I went out and bought a canister of Timbermate woodfiller, recommendation of the Wood Whisperer.

It worked very good. I had to put it on a second time, but I think that is more due to the fact that I have not yet mastered wood filler. I am almost done with the filler, I just need to finish sanding it down, and I should be ready to prime. Now I just need to turn my shop into an operating room, aka, clean it up really good, and I'll be ready to prime, then paint. Unfortunately, I only have tomorrow to work on it before I go to my college orientation, a 3-day live on campus ordeal. After that, my friend is coming in town, and I had hoped to have all the construction done and the cabinet hauled upstairs before he came, but it looks like I will have to rethink my strategy. On that note, anybody know of a non water-based primer that dries quickly?

Cool Stuff and More Work

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted! I got more supplies last Friday, but I had to leave before UPS came, or else I would have posted pictures, and the last few days, I have been blowing and going. Anyways, there were actually two different packages, but they just happened to come on the same day. The first box was from Rockler, which had the T-Molding and router bit. I took a picture of the box right when I got it, at first because I thought it was funny, but then I realized it was a good thing I did, and here's why:

This is pretty much exactly how it looked when I got it. The papers you see on top were in the box, but fell out when I picked it up to bring it inside. Like I said, at first I thought it was funny, but then I realized the router bit could have easily fallen out; luckily it didn't.

The other box I got was from Hagstrom Electronics, which contained the keyboard encoder, breakout board, and two PS/2 cables. I'll get into this more when I start wiring it up, but anyway, I got them.

Once I got the router bit, I could start on cutting the slots.

I started by making some test cuts in a scrap board to make sure it was centered. I did this by cutting a slot, it doesn't have to be very long, and then I took a piece of the T-Molding, and hammered it in, to see how centered it was. It took me quite a few tries to get it right, but I eventually did, and started on the big piece. Interestingly, when I started to cut the slot on the first side, despite the weight of all that MDF, it tried to shift on me. The solution? 50-pound weight to the rescue! It worked perfectly, and allowed me to easily rout the slot all around.

After I routed out the slot, I could get to work screwing it together. I had actually already drilled and countersunk the holes while I was waiting for the stuff to come, so it was a fairly quick assembly, except for one problem. I had planned for the base to be flush with the sides, but when I got it together, one side was further forward than the base, and the other side was too far back. After thinking about it for a while, I ended up planing/shaving/sanding the base down on the other side, so that it looked about the same on both sides.

This is the side of the base that was too far back.

And this is the side of the base that I had to plane down.

Here it is standing up. The board on the back is just clamped on to provide rigidity while I got the other pieces screwed in. It's at this point that you really start to realize how massive this thing is.

I am actually farther than I have pictures of. I have the front screwed in, as well as the top and diagonal piece.
And now, for the mistakes I made. When I was cutting the sides out, I misread the measurement on the plans and had the diagonal cut as 18" from the corner on either side, as opposed to 16", which is what it should have been. What this means is that I had to cut the top piece down to 7" from 9". This also means that the diagonal is too short, but in the spirit of engineers everywhere, it's not a flaw, it's a feature, it makes for better ventilation! I also failed to read the instructions that said to cut a slot for the T-molding in the base, but it's too late for that. I'm sure it will look fine, but I wish I had noticed that. I don't know if I would call it a mistake exactly, but I wasn't exactly consistent in whether I glued-and-screwed, or just screwed. A mistake I did make was when I was drilled the holes in the top piece. I started by drilling the front screw on either side, but I failed to clamp it the whole time. This  made the board sag in the back a little when I drilled the back holes, and in turn screwed it in. Once I noticed this, I backed the rear screws out, lined it back up, and clamped it down hard, and re-screwed it. Of course later I realized I needed to cut a bevel on the front edge of the top piece, and when I took it off, there were cracks in the sides. It may have been fine had I done nothing, but I decided to water down some wood glue, and drizzled that on the edges. I would recommend using a brush of some kind, but I couldn't find one, and this worked fine. The MDF is so porous that it soaked it right up. I'll see how it turns out tomorrow. I also made a template out of 1/4" plywood for the speaker holes, and I can make those holes tomorrow as well. All I did was mark out a circle with a compass, and once I did that, I drilled holes all the way around and used a coping saw to saw out the middle circle. After that, I put a drum sander on the drill press, and sanded to the line. There are definitely much better ways to do this, but it doesn't have to be too precise, as there will be a grill covering it up.

Cutting... Done!

Well, more or less. The only things left are the sides of the CP box. I am really glad that this stage is over; I'm getting tired of being covered in MDF sawdust.

Later, I'll go back out there and start on the construction. According to the instructions, the base is first, so I'll start with that. LuSiD also mentioned that it's best to rout the slot for the T-Molding before screwing it together, and I should be getting the router bit for that on Friday.

More Cutting

Well, I've been cutting the rectangular pieces today. I came in for a little break, but I'll probably be at it again in while. Most of these pieces I was able to cut on the tablesaw, which is always nice. For one thing, I can stand up, instead of crawling all over the place. There are still a few pieces that I have to cut with the circular saw, since the fence on my tablesaw only goes to about 28". And I can't use the miter gauge, since it doesn't have a very good width capacity, and I haven't made a crosscut sled yet, even though I have a piece that I have set out for it, but that's a different story. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments. Anyway, back to work...

The Sides

Well, I managed to finish the sides of the cabinet, for the most part. I used a circular saw and a straightedge for the long straight cuts. I had some problems keeping the cuts square, since I was using a framing square to line the cuts up, which doesn't really have any reference edges. So I had to make a trip to Home Depot to get a different square. It's more or less a drywall square, but I got one with an adjustable angle, which I guess will come in handy if I ever need to mark an angle, but I mainly got it because it can fold up when not in use.

Anyway, here the sides are partially done. I meant to take some pictures of the MDF before I started cutting it, but I guess I just got too excited. Already at this point you can see the shape of the cabinet coming through. You may notice the plethora of clamps around it. This is because I cut both sheets at the same time; this way, they would be as close to exactly the same as possible.

Here it is with the front profile cut, and setting up to cut the back diagonal. I mainly used a jigsaw for the profile. The blue foam underneath is to provide support for the material, while providing a surface that the circular saw blade can cut through. I don't recommend using the foam when using the jigsaw, because you can't control the depth of cut on the jigsaw, and you would end up pretty much destroying the foam. Also, I had a big problem with the jigsaw blade deflecting. This could possibly be the blades fault, but most likely because I was cutting through 1 1/2" of MDF.

Here it is all nice and cut. When I was first planning the cabinet out, I wasn't too crazy about the shape, but it has definitely grown on me.

I'm not sure how much I will need to clean up the edges and corners. I think definitely more than I have in this picture, but maybe not too much more since it will be covered up with T-Molding. I think I just need to make sure all the edges are smooth. I also need to decide what size molding to get. That mainly depends on whether I only paint it, or put some kind of laminate on the side. I think I will probably just paint it a solid color.

Getting Back in Gear

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I have been working on it. The main holdup was that I had to finish some step stools for my dad, along with some other stuff, but I think I'll write a dedicated post for that. I was also trying to decide how to cut the MDF. I got way more obsessed with this than I ever should be on anything. What I was worried about was the accuracy of the cut that I would get at Home Depot or Lowe's. The robotics team I have been on has a panel saw at the shop, so I was thinking about doing it myself, to "guarantee" an accurate cut. You can read my obsessing here. Anyway, I finally decided to "risk" having it done at Lowe's, and there was absolutely no problem. The guy helping me was very professional. He managed to get two sheets on the saw at the same time, and spent a lot of time making sure they were lined up perfectly before he cut them, which is just what I wanted. If you look at the cut plan, on the 3rd sheet, all the cuts are 26" except the last one. So once I told him this, he actually set up a stop block. Even better.
I spent probably a good 15 minutes loading all the pieces into my pickup, and used some cardboard to try to keep from damaging the corners. Anybody who has worked with MDF will tell you that the corners will deform if you give them a dirty look. Since my shop has a concrete floor, I decided to try to get some cardboard to cushion the floor, so maybe the corners won't dent as bad. I found a posting on Craigslist, so that night I went to where it was, and I hit the jackpot. I think I got way too much, but at least I won't have to make another trip.
Anyway, I'm going back out to the shop to work on it some more. I'll have pictures later tonight, and maybe I'll be done with the sides by the end of the day.

First Post!

Ok, people, here's how it's going to go. My name is Matthew Walton, I'm homeschooled, but just finished up taking Dual Credit classes at the local community college. I plan on going to UNT this Fall to major in Electrical Engineering. Right now, I'm about to get started on a MAME cabinet. This will be a great project, because it combines many of my interests: woodworking, electronics, and computers. I'll be posting soon with more info for y'all, but for right now, I'm going to bed. It's getting late.