Yet Another Slim Upright Cabinet (almost finished)

[Staudt]

Hey folks, long time reader, first time builder. I'm aiming to start my project this very weekend now that the wood (15mm-tick MDF) arrived.

The plan is to build an upright slim cabinet that is loosely inspired by a bunch of other projects I followed until now (most notably the "Scratch Slim Marvel vs Capcom"). According to my lazy sketch, it should look something like this:

Initially I was aiming to use a 21" inch CRT TV, but it's too heavy and I don't have enough woodworking skills or equipment to hold it. Then I planned a bartop, but I'd want a real size one, my plan was to build it two pieces (bartop + a connectable lower part) but I found out that the bartop has very specific dimensions and angles and wouldn't work as both.

So I got to where I'm now: a slim upright cabinet. I opted for a LCD screen (I wanted a 4:3 19" but I only have a widescreen one of that size. So I'll use a spare 4:3 17" while I wait for a 19" 4:3 deal to appear) it will weight little enough for me not worry so much about stability. Also, internally I'll not worry much about building a good PC, I'm currently looking for a cheap laptop with a broken screen to do the job, it'll save space, need little ventilation and will be easy to mount.

My scale model (somewhat outdated):

I'm very pumped for this project and looking forward to start. I certainly should have planned more, but there are things (such as the screen angle) that I want to fine tune while building, so I'm leaving a few things to figure out on the spot (what could possibly go wrong?  ). Also, I'll go with the excuse that I don't have enough time to plan into details, but that's really just an excuse  .

Off the top of my head, these are the biggest risks/roadblocks/potential problems I will probably run into:

• The friggin' t-molding: I don't have a router nor I'll buy one (keep in mind that I'm Brazil and that kind of tool is extra-expensive here), I looked for woodworking professionals that could do it for me and surprisingly, I found  none that will do it. I actually considered all kinds of stupid shortcuts (including mounting a "t-saw" to a power drill or cut the leg of the t-mold and glue it, but nothing will work). I couldn't also find a t-mold bit that I could buy and provide a professional that has a router, no luck so far. I'll have to figure this out very soon.
• Woobly cabinet: This will be my first woodwork project, I'll obviously do a lot of mistakes, hopefully I'll be careful enough not make one that screws it all up. I'll be using 15mm MDF that should be stable enough, I hope (can't go higher because my jigsaw blade (an very sharp kind) cuts up to 30mm and I want to cut both sides at once).

I still need to get my work space ready before I start cutting the wood and hopefully start working tomorrow. The plan for the first few working days is: (1) cut the sides and most of the additional wood (2) figure out the t-molding problem (3) laminate and place the connection woods and screws (4) assemble the basic structure.

Gotta get working...

[GregD]

Good luck with it.  You should be fine with the 15mm mdf.  There is 5/8" t-molding that should work just fine with it.  If not, you can always round over the edges of the mdf but that would also require a router.  At least most woodworkers would have round over bits.  No woodworker would ever have a 1/16" slot cutter unless they were installing t-molding.  Make sure you plan for the monitor upgrade when you build as you will absolutely not be satisfied with a 17" monitor in a full size cabinet.  I would skip the 19" and look for a 20" as those have a 4:3 aspect ration while the 17" and 19" have a 5:4 ratio.  Be careful when using the jigsaw.  They are not accurate tools.  The blade will want to wander.

[Ond]

This.......

My scale model (somewhat outdated):

I love it!  These little models people build in the planning stage are awesome.  Hmmm this gives me ideas.  Welcome to a seriously addictive hobby BTW. 

 

Ond

[Staudt]

Thanks guys  .
I just finished drawing guidelines over the side pieces and tomorrow morning I will do the cutting. Most of it will be done with jigsaw, so yeah, I need to be very careful doing straight lines. I do have a circular saw, but the blade is too broad so it's not very usable (not delicate at all and could damage the edges).



Also, I found a woodworker that says he will do the t-molding, but he didn't ask for details so I'm not 100% confident that he has proper router bit, but we'll find out soon enough.

Time to get some sleep, tomorrow should be interesting. 

[alfonzotan]

Geeks.com has a couple of different refurb 20" 4:3 LCDs for $109 shipped right now:

http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=532

That's where I got the monitor for my cab...

[Staudt]

Amazing how sometimes things actually go according to the plan!
I know I shouldn't be surprised, but the side were cut perfectly and it all went pretty damn well.  
... Aside, of course, the fact that this might have been the hottest day EVER and we had to move positions about 3 times before start cutting, but hey, I can't complain.

This was the 3rd and final setup (and before you ask, yes, I moved the birds before starting, didn't wanted to kill them with the dust from the mdf  ):

I did a lot of experimentation with my Jigsaw and the big mean circular saw and, not surprisingly, the circular saw was too broad and was doing a lot of damage to the edges while cutting, so my trusty jigsaw did all the actual cabinet cuts, and it did way better than I expected.

The coolest thing about this jigsaw is that I initially would let an adult do the cutting (and by adult, I mean an actual professional woodworker) but seeing how much he charged me to do that, it would cost about the price of low-to-mid range jigsaw. So I purchased the jigsaw instead, did it myself and it worked perfectly .
To cut straight lines, I took the effort to place a wood strip to guide the jigsaw straight, it worked fine, only a few minor derails that were easily fixed afterwards while sanding the edges.

This is the result of the cutting (before sanding to fix some imperfections and make edges rounder).

Looking at it now, the camera's wide angle makes some lines look not straight, but I promise they are ! I should have photographed at after sanding, but I forgot, sorry

I'm very-very happy with the result. Next step, T-Molding. I will make some calls and look some more for a woodworker that can do it. If it takes too long, I'll buy the pine wood and start working on the front and back cuts first. Wish me luck.

[Staudt]

Geeks.com has a couple of different refurb 20" 4:3 LCDs for $109 shipped right now:

http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=532

That's where I got the monitor for my cab...

Sadly they don't ship to Brazil. I found some deals for 19" 4:3ers at around that price, 20"ers, however, are pretty rare to find. I'm sorta ok with my 17" 4:3 for now, I'll probably upgrade in a year or so when I will (hopefully) miss working on the cab and get back to work to improve it. We'll see 

[Staudt]

Found two woodworkers that seem confident the can do the t-molding, I'll be heading there tomorrow with a few t-mold samples to show and also talk price. The sides are way too bulky and heavy to carry around without being sure it will be done.

If all else fails, there is a plan B which is to adapt and use a smaller circular saw from a friend and carefully do it using wood strips screwed to the base as a guide. I kinda tried and it kinda worked, but would be ridiculously hard and error prone, that's why it's plan B  .

Also, I'll buy the pine wood that's 40mmx40mm broad. It's probably overkill, but I want the structure to be stable and resistant. I'll use 50mm screws (crossing the pine and going 10mm deep into the 15mm MDF). Should work fine.

With the t-molding done, there will be no more impediments to start assembling the structure and laminating. Let's hope I get it all ready by Friday so that I can work on the weekend.

[Green Giant]

Wait, you are going to pay someone to cut a t-molding slot?

Anyone with a router can do it providing you get the slot cutter bit.  You can grab those on fleebay.  You really don't need to pay someone unless they offer really cheap.  If not buy your own router and do it yourself.  It is really really easy compared to the work you have already done.

[Staudt]

Wait, you are going to pay someone to cut a t-molding slot?

Anyone with a router can do it providing you get the slot cutter bit.  You can grab those on fleebay.  You really don't need to pay someone unless they offer really cheap.  If not buy your own router and do it yourself.  It is really really easy compared to the work you have already done.

The proper bit is surprisingly hard to find here (in Brazil), I couldn't find it anywhere nor woodworkers that have it until now. So even with a router I wouldn't be able to do it. I could import from the US but that would take at least a month, so it's a no-no.

Paying this woodworker to do it should be cheap enough (we were talking around $15-$20) if he indeed can do it, that's what I'll find out tomorrow. Wish me luck.

[Staudt]

Yep! Went to the woodworker and he has a table router with a circular saw mount and blade with the proper width for the t-molding. We did some sample cuts and it should do just fine and will cost around $15. Will try to do that tomorrow.

[Martijn]

hi and good luck, just to let you know, making my slim i had a hard time with the space for the control panel. make sure you make the button holes and joystick mount so that you have space because of the angled front panel just below the control panel board.

also placing clamps for mounting it for easy access was hard, there wasn't enough space in mine.

[Staudt]

hi and good luck, just to let you know, making my slim i had a hard time with the space for the control panel. make sure you make the button holes and joystick mount so that you have space because of the angled front panel just below the control panel board.

also placing clamps for mounting it for easy access was hard, there wasn't enough space in mine.

Thanks, Martijn. You probably noticed that your slim cab build is the top reference (and inspiration) for this project .

[Martijn]

- check your standing height with your wrist at that control panel angle, it looks like it could hurt your wrists
- go for a 21 inch at least of go widescreen, 17 " could make your cab look out of proportion
- don't make the screen flush with the side of the cabinet, a little dept makes it look more authentic

[Staudt]

- check your standing height with your wrist at that control panel angle, it looks like it could hurt your wrists
- go for a 21 inch at least of go widescreen, 17 " could make your cab look out of proportion
- don't make the screen flush with the side of the cabinet, a little dept makes it look more authentic

- Hm, you've got a point there, it does look too angled (15 degrees). I'll try it out to see how my wrist rests on it and sand down to a lesser angle if necessary. Good one!
- Yes, in my mind a 19" 4:3 would be ok, I realize that either my 17" 4:3 or 19" wide that I have right now are not enough. I'm trying to sell my 19" wide to get the 19" 4:3.
- Yup, I agree and that's what I've planned for, the screen will be more angled than the sides.

Thanks for your input, very helpful!  

[Staudt]

Lot's of updates coming out of the weekend. First, I got the t-molding done on friday, the woodworker mounted a small circular to a table router and did it in no time. Interesting how thing work when you use the right tools .

Finally!

So early on Saturday the plan was to start screwing in the pines to the sides. I got 40x40mm pines and 50mm screws that will cross thru the pines and into the mdf. This way, the screws will stay on the inside, hidden and will allow me to unscrew them if necessary with no damage to the outside. I positioned the to two vertical bottom pines of each side right over the wheels. The idea here is that they will carry the all weight of the cabinet and weight it all over the wheels. Sort of like this:

Vertical pines right over the wheel to drive all the weight to them

So it's drilling and screwing time. Right away I was having a hard time with the screws, I was using flat-headed ones (seemed like a good idea in case I needed to hide them) but either these were low quality or all flat-headed screws are really hard to get a grip. My screw bit kept slipping out got dull early on and the screw heads where loosing their shape just as fast. The result was that I wasn't being able to drive the screws hard enough and kept adding more and more to reinforce the pines, until I realized it was useless and I needed to get round headed ones. BTW, they got so dull that I almost couldn't remove them.

Damn you flat-headed dull screws from hell!

It was late in the morning already and most stores were closing, so all I got was non-crossed (non-phillips) rounded heads, but they'll do. So after a few hours I got to this:

Twin sides

As I expected, it took some effort to get both side exactly the same, but wasn't that hard. I got them side by side and used a guide wood strip to make sure that (specially) the bottom was properly aligned. A few pines are still missing (top, bottom of the bezel and monitor mount), but those I still want to adjust after I assemble the cabinet.

With that we called it a day. On the next post I'll talk about the work on Sunday when we started to laminate and it went, well, not so smooth .

[jkdubb]

Have you tried drilling guide holes with a small bit before you sink your screws in?  I find that it helps everything go in a lot easier.  Everything is looking awesome so far.

[Staudt]

Have you tried drilling guide holes with a small bit before you sink your screws in?  I find that it helps everything go in a lot easier.  Everything is looking awesome so far.

Yes I did, the screws were 5mm wide and I drilled 3.5mm guide holes and still I was having a hard time with the flat-headed ones. When I changed the screws it went much easier.
Thanks

[Green Giant]

If you can get yourself a box of square head screws you will be very thankful.  They don't require force to keep the bit in the screw head.  But seems like you figured it out.

[Staudt]

Everything went relatively well until now, right? So we decided to gain some time start laminating on the Sunday afternoon.
I purchased 4 meters of a black plastic laminate made out of recycled soda bottles, it's very resistant, relatively cheap and (according to manufacturer) easy to trim with an stiletto. Ok then.
So we cut it to both sides and took what was left from the cuts to fill the visible inside borders.

So I started to apply to the inside borders first with contact glue. I used a spatula like the laminate instructions recommended, but that was taking ages so I tried a paint brush and it was WAY easier. With the all of them applied (and without a router to trim the border) I trimmed it with an stiletto, again, like the laminate instructions recommended, and it took ages to do it right.

Trimming laminate with a blade is frustrating, even if the laminate is made for that, trust me

But that's ok, it worked. Next step is to laminate one of the big visible sides. We applied a hand of glue on both laminate and the mdf (two are required). Then the second hand and we waited around 10min before gluing the laminate.

In that mean time our good luck apparently ran out. There was a minor medical emergency nearby (proven to be nothing serious later) and I'd have to drive to the hospital. No problem, let's rush applying the laminate and leave right away, right?

Right, but things didn't work as planned. As we were holding the laminate to make contact to the MDF (rushing to get that done and getting ready to leave, all at the same time) the laminate barely touched the MDF without getting into position first. CRAP! Contact glue cemented immediately (damn effective glue) and we tried to pull it back quickly only to end up ripping the laminate . After it ripped, it made even more contact . Ok, plan B, we just ripped it all off before it cemented even more.

Proof that rushing to get things done is bad, very bad, mmmkay?

So that where I'm at right now, there is a considerable amount of cemented contact glue on the cabinet side. While not a thick layer at all, it's probably enough make the surface somewhat bumpy if I'd just ignore glue the laminate over it. So I will have to remove those spots by hand by using heat, scratching and then sanding. I can't use chemicals because they could interfere in the application of the laminate later and I can't overdo the sanding to avoid doing damage to the MDF.

So, not a good finish to a productive weekend. But that's ok, there's a lesson to be learned here. From the start I mentioned that I never did anything remotely similar to this, so mistakes are expected .

I'll resume the work in a few days to finish the laminate and then start assembling the cabinet.
As always, wish me luck

[Staudt]

Small update: Looking at the cabinet side the day after, the cemented glue has contracted after it dried and the surface looks almost flat again. It looks like I can just apply more glue and laminate over it and the surface will be sufficiently smooth. I'm not completely sure though, so I'll try to remove most of the glue bumps before laminating.

[Martijn]

just a little note. i noticed your back is all straight, i delibertly made my angled so i can put it against the wall and in our house we have edges  at the bottom.
Because its such a slim design pushing it against the wall is needed for support during heavy gaming

[Staudt]

just a little note. i noticed your back is all straight, i delibertly made my angled so i can put it against the wall and in our house we have edges  at the bottom.
Because its such a slim design pushing it against the wall is needed for support during heavy gaming

I (sort of) considered that, but my biggest concern is stability (a.k.a. stay standing) with such small depth, so I figured that a straight back would be a safer approach.
You're right, however, and I'll have to figure out a way to solidify the support when it's done, maybe by adding extra weight to the lower area or something.

[Staudt]

Time to fix the mess I did last weekend. First step, remove the cemented glue. As I mentioned before, I can't use chemicals, so I tried a bunch of things, including using a sharp blade, but what really worked was using sand papers with wide strokes. After a while I got to this:

Not pretty, but surprisingly smooth

Good enough, time to laminate. Cut another piece of laminate to size and applied glue (no distractions this time). he application went very well and it now look like this:

Pretty good! The other side went the same way . I also used some laminate leftovers to fill the remaining visible areas on the inside. Trimming with stiletto is a pain.

So, good progress and a major screw up fixed, next step, cuts of the front and back pieces and the first assembly! All of it (hopefully) next weekend.

[GregD]

You gotta get a router.  Even a cheap trim router will do wonders in your shop.  Did you use dowels when applying the laminate?  It really helps.

[Staudt]

You gotta get a router.  Even a cheap trim router will do wonders in your shop.  Did you use dowels when applying the laminate?  It really helps.

Yeah, I really missed a router to trim the laminate. I'll be buying one eventually, but right now my project budget is a little limited.
I couldn't use dowels because the laminate I was using wasn't as stiff as formica. It's very woobly and would bend easily and touch the surface (as it did when I screwed up the first attempt). To do it right, 3 people were necessary: two to hold the laminate over the piece to avoid contact and one guy in the middle positioning and slowly making the contact.

[Staudt]

Straight cuts are overrated.

Or so I’m trying to convince myself as I cut the front and back pieces of the cabinet with a jigsaw, rather than my overly powerful circular saw that makes too much mess and noise. Add that to the fact that this is Sunday at 6am and people in the house wanted to sleep and I only had the morning to build the cabinet. So as quietly and fast as I could, I cut pieces for the back, and the bottom front and inside.

And yes, cuts were not quite straight. Actually, they almost were, but when I noticed I need to trim just a little more, I made a mess  . Oh well. At least these crappy cuts were areas that didn’t needed to be straight (the end of the bottom front area and the front and back of the shelves on the inside) the other cuts were pre-made when I brought the MDF. So no biggie.

Time to build the cabinet. Just screws and no laminate on the front and back yet, just in case I need to fix something later. I had no idea how I’d do it properly, I figured that laying one side, placing pieces and then placing the other side on top and getting it up would work. And surprisingly, it did work fairly well.

I made quite a few changes to my initial plan, which proves that having everything planned to detail is a bad idea, I tried to leave a lot of room for changes. Some of those changes were:

• made the lower are of the cabinet a box rather than an “empty” cabinet (with no mid shelf supporting the structure). Essentially I made the bottom and middle pieces (or shelves) to form this box shape. If wasn’t for this middle shelf, the whole structure would be wobbly, so I’m glad I figured this out in time.
• The back piece will not be one big piece with a door from a hole in the middle (that I’ll make later). Initially I’d split in three pieces with the middle one a door that opens down but this wouldn’t work because the side are extremely tight and it wouldn’t open much less close. With a door in the middle of a single piece, the tightness isn’t an issue.

The only thing worth noting about the assembly is that when I was to place the back piece, I couldn’t. the sides made the back area too tight (may just one millimeter, but wouldn’t give). Maybe it was just the laminate pieces (0.9mm each side, that’s ~1.8mm). After much brainstorm, we (my dad was helping here) managed to side it (forcing it) in from top to bottom kind of like a sliding door. While VERY tight, it’s not like it’s stressing the structure or anything like that.

So we got the cabinet up and amazingly, it’s very sturdy and straight. Awesome! 

Next step: I don’t even know. I’ll leave the laminate and back door for later, I guess the next thing is to assemble the top area and then the monitor. I also need to order the extra buttons and control. I’m trying to have the cabinet working (not necessarily finished) by early May in the for my son’s first birthday party.

Yep, very sturdy

As always, wish me luck

[Martijn]

beter to fit the screen first and then look what space you got left to make the corret speaker and marquee panel

[Staudt]

Small but significant progress: I made a door on the back (not yet attached) and laminated the back and bottom-front pieces.

The door idea is to allow me to reach the monitor cables, the mid-shelf for the notebook and the lower area with enough space to fit a PC if I ever need to. To make that door I basically drilled enough small holes to fit the jigsaw and made the cuts. Laminating was also straight forward, I laminated both back and the door together and then cut the laminate around the door from the inside with an stiletto.

This is great progress, this should be the last time I (re)assemble the cabinet's structure. From now on It'll stay standing. Next step: the monitor.

[Staudt]

In a small but relevant update, I just ordered a 19" 4:3 monitor. I was going to go with my 17"er for now and upgrade later, but I noticed the depth of the monitor bodies varies a lot and changing later would require major adaptations on the holder, bezel, control board and plexiglass, so I saved myself from that trouble. I know, a 20"er would be better, but those are too rare to find here.

I found a good deal for a monitor that is missing the base, which is perfect. It should arrive in about a week, until then I'll be working on other things such as the top pieces and attaching the back door.

[Staudt]

Here's is another experiment I made before starting the project: it's a controller using arcade controls and buttons wired to an USB joystick. It is simple and really really ugly, but proven that making the arcade controls is perfectly viable.

I call it "frankie", short for Frankenstein

Poor ugly frankie will be disassembled and it's pieces will become a part of the arcade pretty soon.

[Staudt]

The 19" 4:3 monitor has arrived and it really is a big step up in size from both my 17" 4:3 and 19" wide. Good stuff.

I haven't really made any progress since my last update because I'm close to my vacation and there's a lot of stuff I need to finish until the weekend. On the weekend I'll be working hard to finishing the body work (top pieces, backdoor, laminating, ...) and mount the monitor. I will also cut the control board to size and and work on it.

I've been looking for plexiglass (which I know nothing about) and found a cheap but seemingly good variation called "PS". But PS boards are only 1000 tall by 500mm wide (my cab is 510mm wide on the screen area) so I'll have to figure out a way to either hide the missing 10mm (with aluminum strips perhaps) or only use 500mm for the height so that I can have the 1000mm to cover the width.

[Staudt]

I rushed quite a bit to the the cab to work until my son's birthday and with a big help from my dad and borther, we made quite a bit of progress.
First, we finished the top pieces and laminated the remaining areas, then we mounted the monitor.

Ignore the free advertisement on the monitor, that for covering the screen from scratches

Getting the right screws for the monitor was complicated, the closest I found were those that are used for drawer handles, but they stayed a bit loose. When I went to buy more of those, I got some that were slightly different and surprisingly, a much better fit.

I measured several times to make sure that the monitor would stay straight, and it sure seemed like it was. However when I was measuring the marquee size, I noticed that one side of the monitor was about 5 millimeters lower than the other. I'm not sure why, the mount sure feels solid. 5mm should be noticeable so I'll need to fix that.

To do the marquee, I purchased some 3mm MDF and I plan to cut a hole the size of the screen. I guess I'll need to paint it because if I laminate the mdf border around the screen would still show. That's bad because I will have to buy primer and paint just for that.
 
I also started working on the controls. I think that 6 button for each player is enough but left enough room for 2 more if needed.

And the wiring below the control board, ready for soldering...

So mounting the control panel made me notice what I already expected, as Martijn pointed out, the angle is indeed uncomfortable. I'll have to lower the sides to reduce the angle. I'll use the jigsaw to do that, very VERY carefully as any mistake at this point could be beyond repair. That flaw comes from my planning, I made it 15 degree and guessed it wasn't a lot and never paid much attention to that, oh well...

I that's were we stopped and I decided I'd not deliver the cabined working by the birthday party to avoid rushing. Next step is to fix the control panel angle. As always (and probably more than ever), wish me luck .

[Staudt]

A busy week trying to free up space in my father's garage, which is basically a big storage space for stuff from all my family, turned out to be way harder than expected.

I'll going to buy the plexiglass for the bezel and marquee, but I'm still not happy with how my bezel work is coming along. Current plan is to use 3mm mdf with a hole for the screen and painted black and go along with a 2mm plexi, but making a proper cut (straight and just right) to the mdf is quite hard (no router, remember?) and I never painted mdf before (I know about using primer and all but just never painted before), so it's kind of complicated. Can anyone suggest an easier approach?

Maybe using a ticker plexi and painting it directly would be easier? Would it look better? Cutting separated smaller pieces of the 3mm mdf (sides, top and bottom) and joining them and painting would the joined areas show? Laminating the 3mm mdf instead of painting perhaps? The problem with laminating is the the borders around the monitor area would not be covered.

Also, 2mm plexiglass sounds ok to go with the 3mm mdf sheet or should I go for a ticker one?

[jammin0]

MDF bezel that looks nice will be hard without a router.  A lot of people on the forum use plexiglass for the whole bezel.  Mask off the area where the screen will show through and paint the backside black.  Alternatively you can use tinted plexiglass or glass.  If the screen is close to the glass then when it lights up you will see it but theoretically you won't see anything when it is off.

I'm using glass and back painting it this afternoon.  I can take pictures to show what it looks like.

[Staudt]

Cool! Would love to see the photos. Also, what's the thickness of the plexiglass you're using?

[alfonzotan]

There's no reason for a bezel to be overly-complicated, and no particular reason (unless it's needed for some other structural purpose) to make one out of wood.  It can be (and in some original arcade cabinets it was) as simple as dark posterboard behind the glass with a cutout for the monitor.

[Staudt]

There's no reason for a bezel to be overly-complicated, and no particular reason (unless it's needed for some other structural purpose) to make one out of wood.  It can be (and in some original arcade cabinets it was) as simple as dark posterboard behind the glass with a cutout for the monitor.

That is very true. My biggest concern is that the bezel area is quite big and any cutouts or joints of whatever I use for bezel will show. I also already have a 3mm sheet of mdf that can almost be considered a harder cardboard. But that's a very good point, I might just use mdf strips behind the poster board to sandwich it against the plexiglass and save myself from the trouble of cutting the screen hole and paint the mdf since the poster board will cover it all.

Also, the monitor borders are colored silver, I'll need to cover that. I'm thinking electric tape

[alfonzotan]

There's no reason for a bezel to be overly-complicated, and no particular reason (unless it's needed for some other structural purpose) to make one out of wood.  It can be (and in some original arcade cabinets it was) as simple as dark posterboard behind the glass with a cutout for the monitor.

That is very true. My biggest concern is that the bezel area is quite big and any cutouts or joints of whatever I use for bezel will show. I also already have a 3mm sheet of mdf that can almost be considered a harder cardboard. But that's a very good point, I might just use mdf strips behind the poster board to sandwich it against the plexiglass and save myself from the trouble of cutting the screen hole and paint the mdf since the poster board will cover it all.

Also, the monitor borders are colored silver, I'll need to cover that. I'm thinking electric tape

That's precisely what I did, and it worked fine.  One tip: don't stretch the tape while you're sticking it on... that'll make it peel away eventually.

Another suggestion:  check the archive of bezel scans at mameworld.  They're scanned in at actual size, and you might find one you like well enough to get it printed out and use for your own bezel.  http://www.mameworld.net/mrdo/mame_artwork.html

[Staudt]

There's no reason for a bezel to be overly-complicated, and no particular reason (unless it's needed for some other structural purpose) to make one out of wood.  It can be (and in some original arcade cabinets it was) as simple as dark posterboard behind the glass with a cutout for the monitor.

That is very true. My biggest concern is that the bezel area is quite big and any cutouts or joints of whatever I use for bezel will show. I also already have a 3mm sheet of mdf that can almost be considered a harder cardboard. But that's a very good point, I might just use mdf strips behind the poster board to sandwich it against the plexiglass and save myself from the trouble of cutting the screen hole and paint the mdf since the poster board will cover it all.

Also, the monitor borders are colored silver, I'll need to cover that. I'm thinking electric tape

That's precisely what I did, and it worked fine.  One tip: don't stretch the tape while you're sticking it on... that'll make it peel away eventually.

Another suggestion:  check the archive of bezel scans at mameworld.  They're scanned in at actual size, and you might find one you like well enough to get it printed out and use for your own bezel.  http://www.mameworld.net/mrdo/mame_artwork.html

Cool, seems like poster board + electric tape is the way to go. Thanks!