I chose a green paint for the cabinet, to build upon the Turtles theme. The paint is a melamine paint, and from what I read on-line it is designed to harden well. Because MDF is not like normal wood I also made sure to prime the entire cabinet. Not just to make painting easier but to protect it better as well. The only area I didn't apply paint to the outside cabinet was where the artwork … [Read more...]
Assembling the cabinet
Once everything was cut out assembling was pretty straight forward. All the pieces fit perfectly, partly because of the stencils and time taken to measure everything before getting to this stage. One problem I did run into was finding the router bit to cut a groove for the T-Molding. I went to three different stores before finding it. I also made some adjustments because I thought the TV was … [Read more...]
Cutting and Stencils
When building my cabinet to try and save on time I created stencils of everything first by tracing or drawing it out on Bristol board. I then traced that stencil onto the MDF. The one good thing is that because there are 2 sides to the cabinet most parts I only had to create once, and once it was done each side was almost identical to the other. The other thing is that when you work with MDF make … [Read more...]
Materials For My Arcade Cabinet
Getting materials for the cabinet was pretty straight forward. A cabinet it's self is not all that complex. It is pretty much MDF, Paint, Screws and Glue. I'm positive anyone who wants to do this can with a little help and some determination. Truth be told if I was in wood shop I'd have probably opted to build one of these instead of the chess board I did build in grade 8. At this point I should … [Read more...]