Building an Arcade Cabinet, Part 5: Panels Galore!

In my last post I talked about finishing the all-important side panels. These are important because they are the defining shape of the cabinet! We had to match the iconic Occidental Designs style of the big curve on top.
Wait, did I say I was finished with cutting them? Yeah, right! I was only getting started. 

Because I hand cut them with a jig-saw and measured with a circular saw (as opposed to a CNC machine doing it with computer accuracy), my two side panels, which need to be identical were a bit off. 

So I spent several days in December cutting them and refining them some more.

Here the two panels are compared to each other. You can see the back one is higher than the near one.
I need the edge to match as closely as possible.

I clamped them together to carefully compare them.
Straw bales were actually really helpful to hold things upright!

Here is the tricky inside curve. You can see slight discrepancies between the two panels. I used a power sander to smooth them down to match each other.

Cross Panels

While the side panels are usually an interesting shape, the cross panels are pretty boring. They are probably all rectangles all the same width, but of different heights. They are the horizontal pieces and include obvious things like the control panel (where the buttons and joystick is), the front kick plate, the back panel for access, and the top. 

The middle is the side view, the left and right are all the rectangles that form together to make the horizontal parts of the cabinet.

The cross panels are easy to cut once you get everything clamped down nicely. It still takes me about 15 minutes to make a cut each time, because I keep checking it, lining it up, clamping it. You really want to take your time on all these cuts. It makes a big difference. 

I actually got to take one large piece of melamine and cut it long ways down the middle, into half. My cabinet is 24" wide. The board is a touch over 48". This made it easy. But I had to be very careful ripping the board all the way down the middle to get the cut perfectly straight. 

If some of my cross panels were 24", but some were 23.5" across, then it would make the cabinet wonky. 

Some of the bigger panels, all labeled.

Here are some of the not as tall panels (all still 24" wide).

Getting ready for a cut. Everything is clamped down. The table that splits apart was very handy to have a steady working area.

Checking the size.

Handing Over the Batons

I needed lots of little wooden "batons" to connect all the cross panels to the side panels. I bought some pine trim board that was 1"x2", by 12 feet long. I then measured and chopped these up to the proper lengths. After it was all said and done I should have bought 3 boards of 12 foot long (not just two boards like I started with).

The screws I used were 1.25" and 1.5" depending on how much it could connect to. It is very important to pre-drill all the holes so no material bulges out or breaks as you drill the screws in.

The lighter colored rectangles are the trim board chopped up. This is me comparing the size and seeing how much space will be on the edges when it is all put together.

Don't get excited yet--this is just dry-fitting all the pieces! I lay them all out, no screws, no glue, to make sure it all makes sense.

 

I then spent lots of time actually adding the panels for the base, kick plate, and back side parts, to one of the side panels. It took a while to line up and to clamp as I drilled and screwed. Also I used the pocket hole jig a lot, to drill in from the inside, to the outer panels so no drill heads will show. 

 

Here is a specialty "locking vice c-clamp". It reaches way out and inside, to grip things in situations just like this. It's easy to open and unlock then re-lock quickly to exactly the spacing you just had it at.

The inside baton that will hold the TV platform was hard to do! I had to tape it, and ensuring both batons matched each other took a lot of measuring and checking.

I bought a "pocket hole jig". Totally worth the extra bit of cost to get sunken, long holes to connect screws at an angle.

The oval cut on top on the right is where you put the screw into it. You can see the screw protruding. I'll screw it into a panel and get a very nice fit!

Slowly coming together.
If you can get another person to help you on this day, it's great!

Pocket Jig magic!

Perfect December day in the Midwest :D
Gloomy and cold!

Closer still.

How do we get the one piece with all the panels connected to the other side? At first I thought it would be good to lay it on its side, but this was dumb. 

Instead, with my son, we tipped both panels up. Some of the cross panels drooped a little bit, but as we held it together by hand, and slowly screwed everything together but it was a bit tricky.

Screwed and glued. Mega clamps for the win.

That’s when I remembered that, long ago, I had seen some giant clamps on the farm. My dad has done lots of carpentry work over the years, including building our house back in the 1980's! He has lots of tools laying about the farm. It took some time to locate the clamps. But they were excellent and it would be tough for me to think the project would go so well without them.

Once I clamped those onto the sides, seeing the gaps draw in close was a wonderful feeling. And then getting the screws into the panels and see it all draw up tight, it was so exciting. 

All panels are connected!

 That's it for this installment. 

Lots of drama and laughs are coming soon to the next post! Stay tuned.

Building an Arcade Cabinet, Part 4: Side Panels

I bought the board to really start making the cabinet!

I bought 3 melamine boards, $50 a piece from Menards. 

Two of the boards in my "building room/vegetable store"!

This Stuff is HEAVY

When I was in the parking lot, I had three of the large particle boards, 4 foot by 8 foot, that I had to load into the truck. I had an employee help me load them into the cart at the store. But in the parking lot, I was by myself. It was an overcast day, and wasn’t supposed to rain quite yet, but was getting misty. The water would destroy the boards, so I was worried. I worked for a while to line the truck bed with a tarp, and then was preparing how to drape it across the top of the boards. It was even difficult adjusting the tarp as it was a large 15x30’ tarp (just the best one we had) and it took some wrangling to lay it out nice in the truck and get ready to lay the boards over it and then cover them up because of the mist.

I was standing next to the truck, sliding around a board, trying to get my head around the best approach for how to lift this heavy thing into the bed of the truck AND not tear up all the corners on it.

As I was standing there, an older man got out of a large delivery truck and started walking to the store. But he stopped and asked if I needed help! I was so grateful. It was even still a pain for the two of us to get all three boards into the back of the truck. I’m sure without his help it would have taken me much longer, and I would have make a big mess of the boards trying to get them in there. So thank you nameless, kind gentleman! You helped me make this cabinet.

Why Melamine? 

 

Melamine is particle board with a special paint coating

Melamine is a type of particle board. Particle board is different than plywood. Plywood board is made from very thin shavings of wood that are glued together. There is still strength from the grain of the wood. In particle board, there is no strength from natural grain, though particle board is still plenty strong. It's wood dust that is ground up and glued together. It's homogeneous, not slices of wood. Particle board is very heavy.  It is tough, but it can break differently than plywood. It's often cheaper than high end plywood I would use for a cabinet.

You would use much finer grain plywood than this for a cabinet (cabinet plywood) but here you can see the wood pieces of plywood.

A 3/4" melamine board that is 4x8 foot, weighs around 88 pounds. The same size plywood piece may weigh around 66 pounds. My cabinet is heavier because it's made from particle board instead of plywood. That's kind of bad!

I made it this way because if you use plywood, you have to paint it. And painting plywood and getting a great arcade cabinet-style finish is a lot of work and takes special tools. 

I watched a lot of videos and read a lot about it, but the issue is like this: Plywood is real wood which has fibers. Painting it is tricky. You paint a primer layer, and now the fibers in the plywood soak up paint, and rise up (very tiny fibers) but it feels and looks rough. So then you sand it down, over and over. Now you paint it your black color, and the same thing happens again. You have to sand it more! And if you want to do two, three, or 4 layers to make it look amazing, you have to paint a sand so much! Youtuber Way of the Wrench has an amazing video on painting his cabinet.

"How to paint an arcade cabinet!" Credit: Way of the Wrench

 

After looking at everything involved with building my cabinet, I saw many special tools and tons of effort involved in the painting part of the cabinet. I decided if I could remove this step of work, building the cabinet would be more of a possibility for me.

 

That's where the melamine board comes in. It is pre-painted with a tough surface.  Yes it weighs more, but the pre-painted part did it for me. If you are not careful, the edges can chip. It does make it tough to cut cleanly. Plywood is better that way. But the enormous amount of painting work involved for plywood turned me away from it. 

How I Cut Melamine

Did I mention it's pre-painted which is great, but is a little harder to cut? Okay, it's not that big a deal, but you can screw it up if you're not careful. Basically the special protected coat of paint is tough, and chips when cut. You need to use fine-toothed cutting tools. That means you probably need special circular saw blades, and maybe even new jigsaw blades. 

New jigsaw blades were worth getting to make sure they were sharp.

Notice all the 140 tiny teeth. This is not a standard blade like I use for cutting simple 2x4s!

I used the circular saw for cutting my straight lines. Then I use the jigsaw for the curvy lines. Yes, I cut the jigsaw parts by hand. I'm good enough with it to make it look good. My straight lines are much straighter though, because I used guides and a circular saw.

My standard blade is 40 teeth. It was worth getting a "plywood blade" with at least 140 teeth, to get a cleaner cut. 

 

The black paint on the melamine makes it hard to see your lines. I never found a perfect solution, but I used pencil sometimes, and a white-paint marker other times.

I made a test cut at the bottom of a panel with the circular saw. My dad and I noticed that the top of the board has chipped edges but the bottom did not, since the blade spins under and upwards (hitting clean) and comes out the top, throwing material away. We decided to proceed, but to remember to simply flip both side panels, so the previous “outside-facing” side that I had planned would be on the inside (since the outside edges looked chipped). 

The Workspace

My dad is retired, but runs a farm selling vegetables. He has several large barns. He also has a barn-store that is pretty big, nice, and clean. And it has power, and lighting. He let me build the cabinet there. Also he’s helping me work on it some too, since he is in the farming off-season. I own a home but it doesn't have a garage, only have a shed. I would not have attempted to build the cabinet in my tiny shed!

The vegetable table turned tool pile.

 

It's very good to have a pair of extra hands sometimes, to have my dad to help. This is very slow and mostly boring work. There's lots of standing around while lines are drawn, measured, re-drawn, and measured again. 

Cuts don't happen fast. When I do one cut (straight or curved) it takes me about 15 minute to set up the cut. That's a long time. It feels like a long time. It feels silly. It mainly involves measuring, but a lot of time is adjusting the cutting guides, and setting up all the clamps on the material. It's very important to take your time.

Cutting the Panels

I made the straight cuts with a circular saw. I used a jigsaw from the curved edges. The first panel came out pretty good. It was very tricky to use the jigsaw and get nice curves. 

First panel is cut!
The dust from particle board is very fine and not good for your lungs. Wear a mask.

 

We used 2 saw-horses to support the bottom, and quickly move them around as I cut with both saws. We did this to give them most support underneath. It’s important to not let the board start to fall, as this would pinch the blade as you cut. (Pinching a moving blade is bad!)

The shape of the "Bumpy Grumpy" cabinet is unique. 
It's just big enough that I can't fit two in one panel, sadly.

 

After the first panel is cut, I laid it on a second board, and used that first piece as a template.

We flipped the panel onto the second board and I traced it. I then cut the second panel like I did with the first. It came out pretty close to the first. Slightly off in places, but I plan to sand those discrepancies down.

Can I play the game yet???

 

The side panels are cut!