I went to Home Depot, used my gift card to buy some wood:
3/4" MDF sheet 8x4'. This will be for the sides.
3/4" MDF 4x2'. This will be for the CPO and leftover scrap to practice with
8x4' 1/2" MDF for all other pieces
2x2x8' for making the reinforced joints
Here is what I got done so far, using circular saw, jig saw and a router (I used a 1" long flush trim router bit to clone the 2nd piece, with a help of a jigsaw):
You can see below how close I got when cloning both pieces:
Final product:
Then I cut out the Control Panel which measures 27.5" x 11 1/8" and taped the template for the button holes, which I found at
http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html This site has some great examples for button layouts. I attached the template I used, set to 300 pixels/inch.
I drilled some holes to have a good starting point, and then drilled out the holes entirely with a 1 1/8" spade drill bit:
I am going to use the buttons and joysticks from the X-Arcade Tankstick, to save money, this way I don't have to worry about selling the tankstick since I no longer need it. Here is a side-by-side comparison for my Control Panel vs tankstick
The anti-freeze bottle was used as a weight to hold down the guide when cutting MDF with a jig saw lol
And here is what the CPO looks like with the sides:
I had to make some small cuts in the corners of the side pieces in order to make the CPO fit perfectly.