Nintendo cabinet build - Wreck-It Ralph

[UnclearHermit]

Some excitement today...

Firstly, a quick bit on assembly.  Having got the first side and a few pieces attached to it I had to get the other side attached.  Moving this into place as a dry fit it became apparent that it didn't fit together as well as it should, although the good news is that all the pieces seemed to be in the right place.  I eventually figured out that the second side had become a bit bent, probably because it's been leaning for a while.  Some clamping and weighting down over night sorted most of that.  I still can't get everything everywhere 100% square, so I've done what I can and we'll see how things look as things move on.



Getting from the dry fit to the glue stage is fiddly.  There are several pieces of blocking that need to be glued at the same time.  By the time I got from one end of the cabinet to the other, adjusting/clamping/screwing as I went, I knew that the glue at the other end would either start drying without being properly in contact or just dry in the wrong place.  I couldn't see a good way around this, so I just had to do some extra glue as I reached the other end by bending things around to get access to the blocking.  Seems okay all done, but I'd rather have had access to give everything a decent amount of glue.  My fear here is that the screws are having to do too much work and I won't know that until down the line when it falls apart 

Anyway, onto more exciting news.  Arrival from Mikes Arcade 



This travelled, beautifully packaged, all the way from the US to the UK.  Cost me an absolute fortune in shipping and import costs, which I'm trying to forget.  But I now have all the metalwork pieces, plus some of the flat t-moulding.  There are plenty of discussion threads about who sells proper flat t-moulding.  Here it is in profile, and I'll update the thread once it's in place so you can see the final outcome.



And, finally, with the cabinet glue set and having sat in various clamps overnight, it stands for the first time.  Finally, something resembling an arcade cabinet 

[Arroyo]

  you are doing good work.  Keep it up.  Feels like it’s never gonna end right?

[ChanceKJ]

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[UnclearHermit]

  you are doing good work.  Keep it up.  Feels like it’s never gonna end right?

Thanks.  And yes!  It's nice to actually see some bits coming together finally.  There are so many more details and things to consider than I thought possible at the start of this.  I've got upright spraying to look forward to soon.  I've taken the easier route so far by doing all the spray horizontally.  Hopefully I've learned enough with the spray so far to get the vertical stuff right.

I’ve never tried changing the finish with say a matte clear coat on a gloss base.  I mean, you could always by a can and test your paint process on a scrap of wood. Thats what I always do if I’m not sure.

Thanks, I wasn't planning the change finish.  For the matt coats I can use a matt clear coat.  It was more whether you'd found it necessary to put a semi gloss clear coat on a semi gloss paint, or if you'd found the semi gloss durable enough on its own.  I don't remember seeing you do clear coat on your DK Ultimate, for example.

[ChanceKJ]

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[UnclearHermit]

First issue with metal parts vs plans.  The slot for the bottom bezel bracket is shown as 6mm on the Gaetan plans, but the bracket from Mike's Arcade is at least 1mm wider than that, so I needed to widen the slot and also make it deeper.  I'd never been particularly happy with this slot anyway, having struggled to keep the router in a straight line whilst getting across the narrow surface, so it was a good chance to try something different.

A couple of years ago I bought an old (1/2") router off eBay for about £10, but in the end I bought myself a new 1/4" router because it was easier dealing with a router for the first time with luxuries like instructions.  The old router isn't in great condition, but I thought it was worth trying to construct a very crude temporary router table.  I cut a hole in a lower section of my workbench and made holes to allow the router to be attached to the underside.  I then clamped a guide piece of wood at one end loosely enough to be pivoted to give me the distance from the router bit to cut my slot.  If I made this more permanent I could put a bolt through to allow this piece to be adjusted, but for the very rare use I've planned for it this worked fine.  Once the guide piece was in the correct place I clamped both ends tight.



This allowed me to run my wood along the improvised fence, which worked pretty well.  I had to route twice with the small router bit to give me the slot size that I needed, and I had to patch up one bit where things went off-target, but I now have a bigger slot and it's a lot neater than the original.

The photo below show the bezel support in place, albeit the wrong way around; I think the higher vertical peiece faces OUTWARDS, but I can't be 100% sure because the piece doesn't match the profile of the original.  The original, shown at https://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/store.pl?sku=BZLRETNLWR matches the image on the left, whereas the one I've received has the profile of the one on the right.  I think I actually prefer it this way; I can't see why the original would "stick out" from the bezel.



I'm slightly curious how the bezel sits in what appears to be a vertical support and yet holds a bezel in it that's not itself positioned vertically.  Something has to give somewhere...  It might be that the bezel just pulls the bracket slightly off-angle, but if so then I need to make sure there's enough play in the slot for that to be possible.

There's a slight imperfection in the metal on the surface at the far left that you can see in the photo.  I could probably file it down but then I'd have to paint, so I might just have to live with it, or maybe just put a dot of paint or marker pen over it to make it less obvious

Any ideas what the hole is for?  The only possible thing I can think would be to screw the bracket into the bezel, but I can't think why that would needed or even a good idea.

[ChanceKJ]

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[UnclearHermit]

Ah, okay, thanks.  At least I'm not supposed to be screwing it to anything then!

[ChanceKJ]

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[Imgpoz]

Following this thread.  Great project - love the theme!  Can't wait to see the finished product.

[UnclearHermit]

thanks 

The problem with infrequent posting is forgetting where you've got up to...

So I got the top and bottom pieces on the back.



The problem I found with all of this is getting the cabinet square in all dimensions.  I'd hoped that once I got the two sides together that things would mostly sort themselves out, but there's little at this stage to just stop the thing swaying from left to right.  Angles seem to be off all over the place, and correcting one angle just seems to send another one off.  By getting these two little pieces in place on the back in all helps in starting to hold the cabinet more square and rigid, at least in one dimension.  I attached the front door panel for similar reasons.



This piece attaches to blocking on both sides and the base, so is held well in position, but at the top where it meets the little horizontal piece there's not much holding it in place across the front of the cabinet.  I added a bit of glue to keep those two pieces together, but since it might not hold well on the painted wood I added a few brads in from the rear whilst keeping it clamped.



I hadn't cut the back panel up until this point because I knew its size would very much depend on everything that surrounds it.  The rear door is only 12mm rather than the 15mm of the rest of the cabinet.  Once I'd cut it to size I used the router to cut half of the depth away on the lower short edge, where the panel slots in to a similar groove cut in the lower back panel. 



The panel is currently too tight a fit and I have pull the cabinet slightly to one side to make the recess square enough for it to fit.  I'm not sure if I can find a way to more permanently brace it in this correct, square position.  At the moment if I trim the door to make it a slightly looser fit then the cabinet will simply stay in the "wrong" position, leaving the rear door panel sitting wonky in the frame.  I'm coming back to that once I get a few other bits done.

Speaking of which, I made the container and shelf for the coin box to sit inside.  I'd cut some pieces of this, and/or possibly of the coin box itself, from the parts list CAD file dimensions some time last year.  Looking at them now I'm not quite sure which bits they're supposed to be, because they refer to the coin box shelf and the coin box sides, so I don't know if it's the sides of the actual coin box or of the frame that holds the coin box (which sits on the coin box shelf).  There are also a fair few parts not mentioned, such as tops/backs etc.  The dimensions also don't seem to match other information.

DonkeyKong did a great thread and SketchUp models of the coin box here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=75187.0.  If you look at the dimensions in the first post they show the coin box "container" sides as 7 3/4" high, which matches the size shown at https://www.classicarcadecabinets.com/donkey-kong.html.  But later in the thread (8 YEARS later) he added the SketchUp, which has the side half an inch taller.  Based upon the original sizes the CAD file is actually describing the coin box "frame" and not the coin box itself for the parts, despite the labels.  None of this really matters an enormous amount so long as the pieces all fit and are aligned with the coin mechs, but it's worth remembering if you're copying dimensions for making any of this stuff.  I'd recommend just working from the DonkeyKong files, because you have a nice 3D model with dimensions to make it entirely clear which piece is which.

The fiddly part of making this component are the two holes that the coins drop into. 

I'm sure there's a good way of doing this with various jigs or whatever to get router cuts in the right place, but I couldn't think of any easy one.  I ended up drilling out pretty close to the corners of each hole, taking the bulk out with the jigsaw, then using the flush trim bit along a clamped bit of wood to tidy up each line, cutting very carefully into the corners.  It worked, so that's what really matters, but I'd love to see how others do this in a better way.

With that done it was just a bunch of glue and clamps to get the various pieces together.







Here it is in place in the cabinet, but not screwed in yet:



And a quick test with the coin door in place, belatedly checking and hoping that the holes were where they were supposed to be!



Next up, the coin box...

[javeryh]

Looks great.  Love the details on the inside that not many will even see!

Cutting rectangles out of a panel is super easy using your method (drill the corners, jigsaw the rest) but instead of using clamps, you can use strips of (straight) wood held down with double sided tape to guide your router and flush bit.  You can set up any size rectangle this way in minutes and not have to worry about wonky clamp setups.  You can also do the entire rectangle at once instead of one edge at a time. 

The tape is really really strong and if you are worried about the surface, put down painters tape and then the double sided tape on top.  The large sticky surface area is plenty strong to make things stay in place.

[Arroyo]

Finally coming together, and it’s looking real nice.  I can relate to the challenge of lining everything up.  Don’t see too many people taking about that but yeah, getting the blocking just right is a ---smurfette---.

[javeryh]

Finally coming together, and it’s looking real nice.  I can relate to the challenge of lining everything up.  Don’t see too many people taking about that but yeah, getting the blocking just right is a ---smurfette---.

100% agree.  Getting everything lined up and square is really difficult and stressful especially if you have already applied the glue.  Everyone just glosses over it because, well... it’s really boring and also because everyone knows how to do it in theory but in practice it’s a lot tougher.

[UnclearHermit]

Looks great.  Love the details on the inside that not many will even see!

Cutting rectangles out of a panel is super easy using your method (drill the corners, jigsaw the rest) but instead of using clamps, you can use strips of (straight) wood held down with double sided tape to guide your router and flush bit.

Thanks I think my wife thinks I'm over-obsessing over the inside of a cabinet...

I've read the tape tip before but for some reason haven't given it a go.  It's probably slight fear about getting tape that will actually hold.  I must try though, because it really would make things (that I've already done..) easier!

Finally coming together, and it’s looking real nice.  I can relate to the challenge of lining everything up.  Don’t see too many people taking about that but yeah, getting the blocking just right is a ---smurfette---.

Thanks, but less of the "finally"   

So, the coin box.  I'll probably say it many times in this post, but I'm really loving my improvised router table.  The front panel of the coin box is made of thicker wood than the other pieces (from memory it's 3/4" vs 1/2", but I've been using 15mm for the thicker piece since it's what I have to hand) and is recessed on the bottom and the two sides to take the bottom and side panels.  I COULD have cut those out with the router normally but I'd have to have clamped it several times to get the three separate edges.  Instead I just adjusted my under-bench router and was able to do this more easily.



With that done it was a case of cutting the other pieces and assembling, which always takes me an eternity in trying to make sure that pieces are all exactly the right size.  As before I used the router to do the last couple of mm on each to get the sizes and straightness right.  I just don't trust anything else that I have to make the cuts.

Again, just glue holding this together, and the corner clamps were actually useful for once in holding everything.



I drilled a couple of holes in the front panel before assembly so that I could attach the handle.  I could have just glued it, but it's the one thing that will actually be pulled and so a couple of screws can't hurt.



Again with the router table, I was able to take a piece of blocking to use as the front handle, and add a profile similar to what I see on other Nintendo cabinets.  Without the table I'd find this practically impossible, whereas with the table it's just a case of trying to not lose fingers in the process. The hardest bit was adjusting the wood on the right (improvised fence) so that the router bit hit the middle of the blocking.



Came out okay.



I made a couple of mistakes with the router when cutting out the the panels, one with me tilting the router accidentally and another with a clamp slipping, and then made a third when I used one of the damaged edges as my straight line for the pattern bit to follow.   Since they're all on the underside of the box I was tempted to just leave them alone, since the box isn't painted and so I didn't immediately see an easy way to repair.  But I then realised theat the one on the bottom of the front panel was visible.  So as a long-shot I thought I'd try mixing some MDF dust with some wood glue to make a paste and then using that to roughly fill the holes.



After sanding these are not too bad.  A bit darker, but it's far less apparent now when looking from the front.



And after applying a coat of MDF sealant it all looked good.



I had a few brief moments celebrating the success, went to put the box into the cabinet, and then found that the box stuck out of the front of the frame on the coin shelf. I thought at first that something was catching somewhere or that I had something behind the box that was in the way.  But ultimately, in total frustration, I found that the box was just too deep.  Having examined the problem it looks like I'd measured the side panel depth correctly but somehow forgotten to subtract the depth of the front panel from those pieces.  I think I may even have had them right at some point and then confused the orientation of the side panels (they're close to square) and cut the wrong length.  Whatever the reason, my newly assembled box didn't fit, and I was faced with destroying it and starting again.

Router table to the rescue.

I used the router table to carefully shave off the rear of the box on all sides, slowly adjusting both the depth and width of the router cut until there was very little holding the rear panel in place and the remaining sides were the correct depth.  This was a nervous time, constantly checking and double-checking that I had the box the right way around when routing each edge.



I could have cut slightly further into the back panel, but if it had come loose whilst in contact with the router bit then I figured it would do far more damage to the panel.  So at this stage I just took a knife and cut the final piece of wood/glue that was holding the back panel in place.  I was then able to clean up the edges and then re-attach the back panel in its new position.

Job done, crisis averted, only a couple of hours lost, and box now in place in the cabinet.



Think I might paint the sides next.

[UnclearHermit]

I've been working on the sides.  Started with an MDF primer, which annoyingly it white and so had to be careful not to get any on to the edges.  I used a foam roller for this rather that invest in spray primer.  After a couple of coats of the primer and then a sand smooth I moved on to the red spray.  A few coats later and I'm burning through spray cans at an alarming rate but not really happy with the finish.  This is clearly my lack of experience with spraying, especially large vertical panels.  I've put a picture below.  I've already wet sanded to 600 grit before the latest coat, but I'm still getting visible lines when I spray.

I can try to overlap more but it's hard to maintain that will such a fine spray pattern over the whole cabinet.  Too close/too much overlap and I'll get runs.  Too slow and I'll get runs.  Too fast and I won't get any coverage and just sent even more red dust into the air 

Any tips.  I'm loathed to keep spraying more coats and forking out more money on extra cans if each coat just looks stripy as the last.  The photo below is after the last coat was just sprayed, so it's wet and perhaps will look a bit better when dry.  Will wet sanding with a higher grit help even this out?  Any tips appreciated.  Thanks.

[javeryh]

Are you spraying from a a rattlecan?  I would not do that for a surface that large. 

If I were you I would lay the cabinet on its side to avoid runs.  I find it MUCH easier to paint on a horizontal surface than a vertical one when I am trying to make it look good.  YMMV but I use a 3/8" nap roller on all of my cabs now if I am going to paint.  Three light coats sanding in between (after priming and sanding with Kilz or some sealant).  It comes out perfectly fine.  There is some texture, which is unavoidable, but the color is completely consistent and after a few days of the finished cabinet in your house you will never ever think about it... and I'm as anal as they come with this stuff.

[Mike A]

and I'm as anal as they come with this stuff.

You should put that on your porn star business card.

[javeryh]

and I'm as anal as they come with this stuff.

You should put that on your porn star business card.

If only I could get work.

[UnclearHermit]

Are you spraying from a a rattlecan?  I would not do that for a surface that large. 

I am.  I've seen others do it with success, but clearly they're better than I am  I did paint a panel a similar size a couple of years ago using nothing fancier than white emulsion and a foam roller and it came out absolutely fine. No lines etc. So I am questioning myself a bit at this point about why I didn't do the same here!

Lying it down is an option, although I worry about damaging the sides in trying to get the thing on its side and back. Maybe it would help, because runs would be less of a worry, but they've not been an actual PROBLEM yet. 

The other side, which has been done for about a week, is currently looking a bit better.  But that might be because it's facing away from any kind of light currently.  In the dark it looks fine 

So, given that I am where I am, is it worth trying another coat?  Will a fine wet sand help even things out and should I do that before or after another coat?

[yamatetsu]

Taken from the 'Are there "How to Videos" on arcade building?' sticky in the main forum:
You probably won't get better advice than that.

[UnclearHermit]

Thanks. I’ve watched this several times before, but maybe now is a good time to give it another watch.

[yamatetsu]

I agree with javeryh though. I'd put the cab on the side, tape the edges and put on a coat of primer with a roller. Wet sand with 400 grit sandpaper, put on a coat of paint, wet sand lightly 400 grit, coat of paint, wet sand 400 grit, rinse and repeat until satisfied. Then I'd put a coat of colorless scratch resistant stuff on top, wet sand with 400 grit. I went slightly out of my way by wet sanding the last coat 400, 600, 1200 and 1500 grit. Very smooth surface, but very labor intensive. Looking back, not really worth it, a bit of texture is fine.

To sum it up, you can work much faster with a roller, you don't have to worry about runs and it will be much cheaper, too.

[UnclearHermit]

Thanks all.  I'm taking the advice and moving on from the spray.  The finish was getting better but still needed work, and I can't keep buying spray in the hope I finally get there.



Cab is now laid down again, has had another sand back.



I've rollered on one coat.  The hard bit was getting coverage before the paint started to dry enough that it became hard to get rid of lines from the painted edges.  I tried to move quickly to get a coverage over the whole side and then roller off top to bottom in long strokes.  But my the time I got to the top to bottom strokes I found that I had to give some areas a good going over to move paint that was already forming edges.  Maybe it's a bit warm today.

Biggest problem is that after an amount of rolling I noticed little lumps all over the place.  I'm hoping that this is grit/dust that's somehow got into the surface during painting (it was thoroughly wiped over before painting) and not any of the paint layers lifting.  The foam roller leaves little bubbles all of the place that get better as I roll over, but these area are hard little lumps and they're not over the whole cab side.  W



Once it's dry I'll sand this back and see what I'm dealing with.  Hopefully it's dry enough to do that tomorrow, but I don't want to sand if it's not ready for it.  Obviously I'm hoping it's some kind of grit that's come from somewhere.

[yamatetsu]

What I did was painting small areas.

- roll the roller in the paint until you get a good amount of paint on it, shy of dripping paint

- start on top of the cab, left side, make an area a third of the cab's width, do one 'lane', do the second lane lightly overlapping the first lane, repeat until the roller gets 'dry'

- dip the roller into the paint again, make the area bigger, until the roller gets dry

- use the dry roller to distribute the paint evenly on the area, going left/right and up/down

- paint the next area, adjacent to the first one, overlapping the first area a bit

- this time, when distributing the paint, roll over the first area too, so that you get one smooth big area

Rinse and repeat until the cab is painted. Make sure that you use a good amount of paint on the areas so that they don't dry immediately. Using the dry roller to distribute the paint evenly shoud get rid of most of the bubbles, the rest will vanish when the paint dries. You will have to wet sand to get a smoother finish, of course.

I suggest using a sacrificial board of fair size to practice on a bit, because it's way better to redo a smaller board than the whole cab (like I did) (multiple times). Once you get the feel for using how much paint/how to distribute it, painting the cab will go fast and easy.
Practicing wet sanding on that board is a good idea too, because you can mess up the paint real good if you overdo it.

[UnclearHermit]

Thanks.  Did you not find that by the time you got to the 6th step and went back to the first area that it was already setting enough to prevent it from being smoothed out?  When I was trying some bits and I went back within minutes and moved the roller across existing areas I found that it created areas of paint that then didn't want to move unless they were really pushed to do so.  But that meant more pressure on the roller than I'd normally think of using, and still left areas that looked well painted and "shiny" and others where it looked far less painted.  Do I just need to use far more paint?  I got through half a 750ml can in no time at all on one single cab side.

I also found that I can go over bubbles as much as possible, but when I return to the cab when dry that there are still loads of bubbles.  A wet sand removes them, but that's going to make getting a final coat right tricky. 

Sorry for the questions, just feeling a bit at the moment like I just create a new set of issues with every coat of paint I add.  At this rate the cab will be half its weight in paint 

[yamatetsu]

Hm, I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding. I don't smooth out every area, just the current and the previous one. So if I paint area six, I go over area six and area five again, not over all of them. Also, I don't use much pressure at all on the roller, just enough to get the roller rolling. When smoothing the paint, I use multiple fast and light strokes.

Example:



Paint area 1, smooth it by going over it multiple times lightly from left to right and if needed, up and down too.



Paint area 2, do a small overlap to area 1. Smooth area 2, when done go a few times lightly over area 1 and area 2 to eliminate some bubbles. Area 1 is now finished.



Paint area 3, do a small overlap to area 2. Smooth area 3, when done go a few times lightly over area 3 and area 2 to eliminate some bubbles. If area 1 is still wet, you can do long strokes from the left edge to the right edge of the cab to further smooth areas 1-3. Areas 1-3 are now finished.



From now on it's the same process as like painting areas 1-3, except that when painting areas 4-6, you do a small overlap on the areas above so that you get a smooth transition.

Again, I suggest practising this on a sacrifical board until you get the hang of it, otherwise you will probably end up having to sand down the cab and paint it again.
You can also mess up the paint by sanding it, so practising that would be a good idea, too.

[UnclearHermit]

  Thanks so much for taking the time to do that explanation.  My attempts so far, which I might detail at some point, involved attempts to cover larger vertical areas and I've had various issues.

Trying your approach, admittedly using just 9 panels (3 X 3) in total to try and reduce the number of potential problem areas with overlaps, is definitely the best yet.





I did roll out the bubbles as I went, although inevitably there were SOME left, but it does seem that some bubbles appear AFTER I've left it alone for a few minutes.  I've already learned from previous errors not to try and mess with paint when it's drying, in a mis-guided attempt to make things better.  AND I've learned that sanding takes these air bubbles away quite nicely.



The big question now is how this will look after it's dry and had a light wet-sand.  The finish is high-gloss (feels really nice, almost plastic, in the areas where it's "right") but I'd happily dull it a little with a light sand, if that's the worst thing I have to deal with.  But any little patches where it's too dull will likely mean the whole thing will need another coat, and that has the potential to go horribly wrong again 

Lessons learned coming at the end of this...

[jennifer]

It is going to look sanded...However you did it correctly and it will turn out beautiful with that plastic look if you so desire...Thin the paint a little more for your last coats, now you are just trying to get an even fill over your flat scratches...3 light wet coats.

[yamatetsu]

Don't worry about the paint looking dull after sanding. You have to do at least one or two more thin coats to fill the gaps anyway. If you want to get a really smooth finish, lightly wet sand the final coat using progressively finer grits. I went 400, 600, 800, 1200, 1500, which is a bit excessive. If you want to make it REALLY shiny, polish it with car polish. I used a 3 component polish, the first one is to remove scratches, the second one is for removing scratches that you made while removing scratches, the last one makes the paint really shine. It makes a huge difference.

Do you use a sander to do the sanding? If so, my advice is to do it by hand. I tried using an orbital sander, some bits of paint got stuck on the sanding disc and cut nice circular grooves inot the paint.

[javeryh]

Don't worry about the paint looking dull after sanding. You have to do at least one or two more thin coats to fill the gaps anyway. If you want to get a really smooth finish, lightly wet sand the final coat using progressively finer grits. I went 400, 600, 800, 1200, 1500, which is a bit excessive. If you want to make it REALLY shiny, polish it with car polish. I used a 3 component polish, the first one is to remove scratches, the second one is for removing scratches that you made while removing scratches, the last one makes the paint really shine. It makes a huge difference.

Do you use a sander to do the sanding? If so, my advice is to do it by hand. I tried using an orbital sander, some bits of paint got stuck on the sanding disc and cut nice circular grooves inot the paint.

I did the same thing... and I will never do it again LOL.  I googled “piano finish” and followed the instructions.  Ended with the 3 step Novus polish and everything.  15 years later it still looks great - like plastic and I can see my reflection in it if the light hits just right.  Doing it by hand was the only way I could get the sandpaper to not gum up and I went all the way to 2000 grit.  Hours and hours and hours of work. 

[UnclearHermit]

Thanks all.  My goal here was never to get a super shiny finish, just to have it painted so it looked even

I'm wet sanding by hand, always have since the start of this.  That side of thing is going really well.  With any dry sanding I found the same problem that bits of paint would quickly build up on the paper and just lead to scratches.  Wet sanding is satisfying by comparison.

One question though.  If I sand back after every coat of paint, but that then dulls the paint in a way that makes the finish look uneven again, then how do I deal with the bubbles in the final coat?  Is the idea that the thinned paint is less likely to leave the bubbles in the first place?  Or do I need to do something like polishing to that final coat?

[yamatetsu]

The idea of multiple coats is that you apply a coat, remove the 'spikes' by sanding, apply a second coat that fills the pits of the previous coat a bit, remove the spikes, repeat until you have an even surface without any pits. You may end up getting a dull looking finish, but it should be looking uniform and be smooth and even. If it's too dull for you, you can apply a surcoat of clear gloss paint which will make the red dull paint look shiny.

Personally, I wouldn't even want to give it a high gloss look, because high gloss reflects the objects near it, so if you look at it, you will never see just the red color, but a mix of reflections.

[UnclearHermit]

Thanks.  I feel the same about the gloss finish.  The spray, although in theory also gloss, didn't look or feel anything like the texture that the roller is giving (which also gives me a slight dilemma for the pieces aready sprayed...).  I also know that a gloss coat is going to show every little tiny perfection!  My only fear at this stage is that the gloss looks red, but as soon as lightly sanded it looks more pink.  Hopefully when it's more even the colour when sanded will look better.

[jdbailey1206]

One thing I found that helps between the sanding and painting is running a microfiber cloth (no cleaner) over the sanded areas.  It helps removing the dust and helps the paint adhere better.

[UnclearHermit]

Yes, thanks, they're great.  Much better at removing and keeping bits of dust off the surfaces.

[UnclearHermit]

Moving slowly ahead with this.  Had to wait for some new paint so I didn't risk running out half-way through a coat, and have to wait 18 hours between coats plus time to sand etc.  So it takes a while, but I'm not in a rush.

After another coat...


And after sanding


You can see the dents left by previous bubbles after sanding.  I'm trying my best not to get bubbles in new coats, but a bunch of them are there regardless.


And another coat.  You can see a patch in the middle in the light that's not taken the paint as well, so maybe didn't get as much paint in a previous coat or something.  I've got a couple of patches like that that are my focus for the next coat.  Hoping I'm near the end now, but I need a more even finish when sanded before I can call it a day.  It looks great when it's wet, but when dry the finish still isn't consistent. 

[Laythe]

Looking good!

The process is slow, but your detailed pic of the state of the pitting left by bubbles makes me think you are doing it right.  Keep building up and sanding down, and the paint in the bottom of those holes will build up a layer at a time each coat. 

At some point, your gradually improving surface will meet your gradually sinking standards, and it will be done!     Hold out as long as you care to.

It's already looking good enough to authentically be in any arcade back in the day... but you can do better with the next coat.   

[UnclearHermit]

Painting painting bla.

On more exciting news, I got around to assembling most of the coin door and doing the wiring. I think (it's been so long...) I mentioned the wiring of this before, but I've wired it so that (hopefully) the two coin mechs both send a credit pulse and increment the coin counter, whereas pressing the button just does the credit pulse.





I want the coin door wiring to be detachable, so I've been looking for ages for a way to do this.  Loads of molex and other connectors for this kind of thing, but buying all the correct bits for both ends and the correct crimpers (at a decent price) makes it all quite complicated and I can never seen to find just the bits that I need!  Anyway, in a quest for something better I found aviation connectors, which seem pretty perfect.  No crimping, just soldering.  Only downside was that the only ones I could find on places like Amazon/eBay were ones for panel mounting rather than connecting two cables.  So in the end I did use eBay but had to wait for something from China to arrive.  That was supposed to be 6 weeks but they arrived in about 2.

The two halves of the connector push together and then lock using a screw thread.



You can see the two ends when separated here.  These are six-pin ones, but you can buy in other variations.



The end bits then screw off to reveal the solder points.  These look perfect, so one end should be getting added to that coin door wiring this weekend.

[UnclearHermit]

Any tips on the last bit of bringing out some shine on the paint?  The paint has been sanded to the point where, yes, there are still some little holes from burst bubbles, but otherwise is very smooth to the touch and is just showing surface swirl/scratches that I can't "feel".  But if I put a bit of polish on an area then I end up with a patchy look to the shine, so in the right light it looks great but in the wrong light it looks terrible.  I don't understand how it can FEEL the same but some bits look lovely and glossy red and some look like shiny matt.