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New cabinet project - Currently Un-named

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brewerdude:
I've been working on a cabinet project for about three months now, and thought I'd post some pictures for the world to see.  I'm not a graphic designer/artist by any means, so this isn't very elaborate.  I just want to have a decent looking system I can keep in the house and have a wealth of games on it.  The computer portion is pretty much complete; I have emulators for MAME, Atari, NES, SNES and Daphne.  I'm using HyperSpin for my front end.  I bought the cabinet on July 4 off of Craigslist for $200 - a pretty sweet Bottom of the Ninth. LOL  It was pretty beat up, monitor was OK though.  Turns out, that's been one of my lowest cost items.  I've spent most of last month working on the computer, as it's just been too damn hot to work in the garage!  It's just started to cool down, so I've been able to get back sanding, sanding and more sanding.

The original cabinet:

Left Side


Front


Right Side


CP (Yuck!)


Monitor


Marquee


Back


It's a Taito cabinet!


Pretty dusty in there


Well look at that, started it's life as Jungle Hunt!


The paint was pretty much a mess - whoever converted it just slapped some blue/grey paint over the original Taito graphics (for shame!) and stuck on the new sideart.  The bezel didn't have any artwork, other than two stickers I noticed were removed - some of the glue was still left behind.  It still had the original old school power supply (I was afraid to look at it for fear of being shocked!) and a more modern arcade power supply.  I gutted the interior and got to work on the paint...

brewerdude:
I decided to sand it down to remove the paint instead of using stripper.  I've done paint stripping projects before, and they turn out to be a huge mess.  Well, now I've learned that since I opted for the belt sander approach, I've had to spend many hours sanding out and filling in all the gouges made by the belt sander.  Doh.  It would have been less harmful if I used the orbital during the stripping stage, but it just wasn't powerful enough to get through all the layers of paint.  I've probably spent over $100 on sandpaper alone.  Ouch.

First step - remove the stickers




Look at that beautiful green Taito paint underneath!


After lots of sanding




Ready for primer:


First coat of primer




Unfortunately, when I applied the primer (two coats), I used a cheap foam roller that left a textured surface.  I spent a few hours sanding that out.  After doing some research, I opted for a better roller cover with a 1/4" nap.  Thankfully the paint laid down nicely.

First coat of semi-gloss black




After inspecting the first coat, I noticed some swirl marks from the sander (dang it!).  Back to more sanding before I apply the 2nd coat.  I plan on doing a total of four coats.  Maybe more if necessary.  More pictures as I progress...

Well Fed Games:
Looking good. Those Taito cabs might have my favorite profile/shape of all the manufacturers.

javeryh:

--- Quote from: Well Fed Games on September 27, 2012, 09:27:52 am ---Looking good. Those Taito cabs might have my favorite profile/shape of all the manufacturers.

--- End quote ---

Agreed.  I've got one in my garage that's all beat up and I plan to fix it up (as soon as my living situation gets under control - probably some time next year).  It's going to be my son's custom arcade machine that he's been begging me to build for him pretty much since he could talk.

OP, how hard was it to strip the cabinet down to a bare surface?  That's the route I'm going to have to take.  I'm also going to remove all of the bolts... don't ask me how but I figured it out on a DK so I'm confident I can do it on one of these...

brewerdude:

--- Quote ---OP, how hard was it to strip the cabinet down to a bare surface?
--- End quote ---

Using a belt sander with 40 grit, it wasn't all that hard.  :)  The main problem I faced doing that was getting around the bolts.  I made a couple of gouges that I had to fill in with putty and then resand.  Plus, I could never get all the paint totally removed around them.  Though, I weighed that against disassembling the whole cab.  There are places where the joints are glued, and I didn't want to go down that road.  Also, I didn't want to remove the monitor for fear of killing myself and/or destroying it.  Looking back on it, I probably could have just loosened them all a bit, and probably would have been able to get under them.  I think when it's all said and done, it will be OK.

The other big pita, was sanding in corners.  Those sponge sanding blocks were very handy for that.

Just put in my 2nd coat of semi-gloss tonight.  I learned that sanding black paint is very messy...

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