Great build look forward to seeing the completed cabinet and if its going to be a standard or custom finish.
Thanks, and looking forward to seeing that myself
The slow progress continues, along with the mistakes
I cut a 1/2" recess in the rear of the two sides to accommodate the door. It's times like this that I find myself going back over notes I've made to try and figure out things like how deep the door is, and therefore how deep that recess needs to be. Similarly, how wide is the door and so how much does it overlap at the sides? I think I ended up at 1/4" X 1/2" for this recess in the end. Some of the door width measurements I saw would have left the side panels cut really thin.
The recess doesn't run all the way from top to bottom. It stops above and below where the top and bottom rear panels attach. Or, at least, it's not SUPPOSED to run all the way. I'd originally cut it correctly but with a 1/4" X 1/4" slot. When I figured that it actually needed to be 1/2" deep and cut it deeper I completely missed my "stop" markings at one end.
So out with the filler again to try and rebuild the missing section.
And after a fill/sand or two:
You'll also notice a load of masking tape already on these panels. I might live to regret this, but I'm planning to paint the inside of the cabinet before assembly. That seems a lot easier than trying to paint it later. The downside is that I need to be able to attach the blocking to wood (not paint) and so I've had to carefully mask out where the blocking goes and hope that I can still see everything I need to when the tape gets removed. I've also got to hope that I don't end up with loads of visible gaps in the paint where the tape is right on the edge of where the blocking will go.
I'm entirely expecting this all to fail horribly, but if it works then it will save me quite a bit of time painting around blocking later on.
I'm using an MDF primer, partly just to see if they're actually any good. The last time I painted MDF I used normal white emulsion and was quite happy with that, plus I sealed the edges with a wood glue/water mix. This time I'm just using the MDF primer.
The key thing I've noticed so far is that the fibres raised a lot less than they did with the emulsion, which isn't entirely surprising but was good news. I only needed a light sand before moving onto a second coat. I'm using a microfibre cloth to wipe down after sanding. I've never tried that before, but it seemed a reasonable way to shift the dust without it just flying into the air.
I'll never understand Nintendo's logic in only painting parts of the inside of the cabinet. I mean, I understand why the black bits are black, but the seemingly random points at which the black stops make no apparent sense. They also seem to be different on different cabinets. So I've gone for something similar to some that I've seen and will probably spray the areas I've currently got masked with a matt black (that's "flat" black for US readers) because the area is small. I've never sprayed anything before so this will be an interesting experiment. I highly doubt I'll be spraying the outside.
The other annoying thing about parts of the inside being unpainted is that I'll be left with exposed MDF faces and edges, whereas I'd far rather have things sealed to reduce potential water damage etc.
One paint question - where does the gloss black starts and stop? In photos I've seen it seems to run along the front few inches of the cabinet, so I think that's all that's visible from the outside (but some gloss will be "inside", where you'd think there would be a risk of reflection). I don't know what happens at the top of the cabinet where the "inside" of the sides are visible for about 15mm. Does the gloss also cover this area, or does it transition from gloss to matt somewhere as it goes up past the front of the marquee?