Plans Plans Plans

[pommie]

OK there appears to be very well documented plans for all upright cabs but very little for cocktail cabs. I know the Kyle has done a greate job documenting the midway style cab and Jakobud has the Robtron documented on his web site but I'm after a smaller cocktail, typicaly known as the "School Desk" style.

If checked the examples and well, the details arent as comprehensive as Kyles. I was just wondering if anyone is either in the process of maming one of these type cabs and would mind documenting the process, or I there are any plans that exist elsewhere I could use.

Example games can be found on KLOV i.e Deluxe Space Invaders, Asteroids, Centerpeid etc

Thanks

[paigeoliver]

I own one, and have owned others in the past. You can't build them without welding, and the carpentry work is A LOT more advanced than other cabinets.

All that combined with the fact that they are the cheapest cocktails around (for dead/empty/dumb game installed), means that it does not make sense to build one.

There is no way I would be able to come up with proper plans. All the wood pieces are at angles, with complex joints between them.

[pommie]

Hi Paige,
I think I mentioned to you before that I live in Singapore and the possibility of finding a cab here is very low.
I know they are cheap, I actually have a guy offering to sell one for $75 US but the shipping costs would be huge from the states.
Anyway I'm not gonna give up on this. Maybe I'll just sell a kidney and ship from the US, I just want to make sure Ive exhausted all my options first.

Cheers

[paigeoliver]

Pommie, I also explained before that those cabinets were also most common in your part of the world. If Singapore had arcade games in the early 80s, then those cabinets will be there somewhere. You just have to find them. Have you tried placing an advertisement?

It also still might be cheaper to import on than to build one.

[macattack]

Similar problem in the UK, the Midway style was never sent the UK and all we got was Tatio.  even saying that an old cabinet with a crap game and monitor still fetches around

[paigeoliver]

Mac, yeah, uprights are easy, and Midway cocktails are easy, school desk cocktails are TOUGH. Some of them even have curved pieces of wood on them.

But, you can bring even the cruddiest one back from the dead fairly simple. My Time Pilot looked like updog when I got it. (I actually bought the monitor from the guy and he threw in the cocktail for free because he didn't think it was salvagable).

First off, pull off ALL the black metal and strip it using a wire wheel drill attachment, then repaint gloss black.

Scrape all the paint off the underside of the glass with the exception of about a half inch around the monitor cutout (that seldom flakes, and you are never gonna mask those curves correctly anyway), mask off the middle, and repaint with flat black.

Cut off those rusted, nasty, likely half missing leg levelers, and go to the hardware store and get some new furniture ones (the ones with the felt bottoms are great for cocktails).

Those few steps alone will make a world of difference. A good overall cleaning and some shiny new joysticks and buttons will do the rest.

If you ARE going to attempt to scratchbuild one, then I suggest first shopping around all the local thrift stores and garage sales and looking for SOMETHING that has suitable legs on it (coffee table, desk, etc), and then kind of winging it from there. An exact copy of one of the original tables would be WAY too hard, but if you can get some decent legs, then you could make something close. I simply cannot stress enough how many parts these things have on them that would require advanced carpentry skills and a metal fabrication shop.

On the other side of the coin, easiest cocktail table to build would probably be the Cinematronics one, it doesn't even need tempered glass (they shipped with silk screened plexi). Look around on arcadeflyers.com for some pictures (kspiff also owns one that used to belong to me).