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Wife- / Living-Room-Friendly Cocktail Cab
piecesof8:
Disclaimer - Let's just get this out of the way right up front: I'm a cheater. I'm building a cocktail cab from an Arcade Depot kit. You won’t be seeing any amazing feats of woodworking here. But I figure there must be others out there who, like me, don’t have the tools or space to do a complete from-scratch build, so maybe they’ll be able to garner something helpful from my experience. We’ll see.
I decided on a cocktail for a few reasons. First, I have fond memories of cocktails from back in the day when every pizza joint had one so you could enjoy a few rounds of Galaga or Ms Pac while you waited for your order. Second is space: unless we eventually build another room onto our house, this is realistically the only cab I’m going to have room for. A cocktail with a third control panel seemed like the best option to be able to play both vertical and horizontal games. And finally, a cocktail with a nice stained finish just seems more “living room friendly” than an upright cab. My plan was to go for a more modern wood finish than the “80’s oak” of the classic cocktails, with all black controls. Classy. :)
I received the kit from Arcade Depot on Friday and got a good bit of the assembly done over the holiday weekend. Pics to come later.
piecesof8:
First, a quick review of Arcade Depot.
Scott at Arcade Depot was great to work with. I liked their base cabinet design, but I wanted to make a few customizations. Scott was very willing to accommodate my customizations, and his pricing for the custom cuts was more than reasonable. The quality of the end product that I received is top-notch. There are a couple small iffy places in the finish, but still much better than I could have done by hand. The assembly instructions were a little sketchy in places (I’ll get into more detail once I get to the pics), but anyone who has worked with any type of kit furniture should be able to figure it out without too many headaches.
Overall, I’m very pleased with the product I received from Arcade Depot. There’s only one area that somewhat soured my experience with them, and that is...
Communication. Sorry Scott, but I’ve gotta ding you on this one. I first started working with Scott way back in mid-January. Everything was going along fine, until in early February Scott suddenly stopped replying to my emails.
About two months went by with me sending an occasional “Hello, anyone there?” message. Even tried sending from multiple email accounts. I was convinced that Arcade Depot was no more, until I saw a forum post somewhere that made me think someone had received a recent response from Scott. I tried once more from yet another email address, and finally got a response.
Turns out that Arcade Depot is using some kind of whacky message routing that uses the value of the From: field to route messages, and messages with my name in the From: field were ending up in a black hole, or maybe somewhere in Neverland. I was able to get back in touch with Scott when I used an account with a different From: value. Now normally I would say this was just a fluke and I was the one person with the bad luck to experience it, but if you do a search for Arcade Depot you’ll see that I’m not the only one this has happened to.
Arcade Depot offers no means of contact other than email. If you’re going to run an Internet-only business with email as the sole means for your customers to contact you, then in my opinion that email had better be reliable.
Once I finally got back in touch with him, Scott was extremely responsive right up until the end, when I had some difficulty finding out the shipping status of my order. Apparently Scott had been dealing with a family emergency, which I can hardly blame him for. Once they finally did ship it out, they did so via overnight air (not necessary, but appreciated nonetheless), so I can’t really complain about that.
So to sum it up: I’m very satisfied with the product I received, it’s just that I’ve never had to work quite so hard to give someone my money before. Had this been a more mainstream vendor, I would have run far away after about the second unanswered email. Moral of the story: if you decide to order from Arcade Depot, you’re going to receive a very nice product - just be forewarned that you very well could encounter some communication issues and delays along the way.
Edwards80:
Don't feel bad about not building from scratch. You are 1up on me, as if it was even a contest, as I have had a shell built for me - Just waiting for delivery now :)
I wanted the cab soon and had no inclination to build it myself, despite the extra cost of having it made. Looking forward to wiring the controls etc. up though! I'm going to scratch build my next project but that's a much smaller affair :D
Looking forward to seeing how your build goes.
BurningBeard:
So you gonna find a way to sneak some kinda Clutch theme into it?
:cheers:
piecesof8:
You can tell just from the packing job that the Arcade Depot guys have been at this for a while. I was actually quite surprised at how small the package I received was. Everything was very securely wrapped and well-protected.
First thought: All that came out of there?
Second thought: What have I gotten myself into?
My Pilot, looking a little pissed that I've taken over its spot in the garage to work on this project. Also notice that I really should be mowing the yard instead of building an arcade cabinet.
First step, glue up and screw up the bottom of the third control panel:
The third CP itself is in two parts that attach with dowels and glue. Word to the wise: don't buy those "set of 6 new" ratchet clamps that pop up all over ebay when you search for ratchet clamps. You get what you pay for.
Third CP on:
Via piano hinge:
Third CP side panels. Note that I strayed from Arcade Depot's directions here, as their directions said to glue on the side panels before installing the piano hinge. But then when you got to the step of installing the piano hinge, the directions said to adjust the side panels for proper clearance (which would have already been glued in place at that point had I followed the directions step-by-step).
Gluing the P1/P2 sides (front and back? ends? I'm not sure what to call them in this case) to the bottom panel:
Attaching the rear bottom panel:
Attaching the front panel w/ third CP installed:
Attaching the P2 control panel housing:
Attaching the P1 control panel housing. Notice the growing pile of broken ratchet clamps in the background. These things should have come with a warning sticker: "WARNING: this item is for decorative purposes only. Any attempt to actually tighten the clamp onto wood will result in the cheap plastic housing flying apart and the trigger falling off."
A test fit to see what the finished P1/P2 control panels will look like. I don't want to mount these just yet since I don't have my controls yet.
Installed corner brackets for added support:
Piano hinge for the rear panel:
And now for the biggest pain of the assembly: attaching the hinged portion of the back panel to the piano hinge. It was a ---smurfette--- figuring out how to get it lined up just right. What I did was fed masking tape through the slots in the piano hinge, then closed the hinge and set the panel into place in the closed position, then tightened up the tape. This allowed me to open it with the tape holding it just enough that I could then install the screws.
And finally, a preview of the finished product. The top is just resting in place in these pics - I don't want to actually attach it until I figure out how I'm going to secure the monitor to it. Arcade Depot custom-routed it for my LCD monitor (an HP LP2065), so now I just need to figure out how to hold it in place.
And that's where it stands for now. (Well, actually it stands in the back corner for now - had to get my truck back in the garage before it disowned me, after all.)