my first stained cabinet.............

[notaburger]

Well, here she is.  I've been working on it off and on for a couple years now.  It's taken me this long partly because I'm lazy, but mostly because I don't have a garage and I'm broke.  Last weekend I finished enough where I figure that it's worth posting on here.  Some things that i've learned on my first piece of woodworking...

1)  sand, sand again, then when you think that you're done, wait a day and sand again

I am very sad to say that I have a few scratches on my machine before it even gets used, but then again, I will care less about people screwing it up when it starts to get "played on."

2)  Listen to people in the woodworking forum when they say to pretreat your wood.  I tried a control panel and it stained very unevenly.  Luckily I was looking for a reason to make a new one so I made a second one that I pretreated it and it came out MUCH better.

3)  I found that it works very well to only apply a minimum amount of stain.  I basically had to wipe off nothing since it all had dried.  That way I was able to control my stain better.

These may all sound like "duh" statements to most of you but I think those 3 tips could have saved me some trouble.

I have purchased a gateway 31" monitor that "should" fit inside, otherwise, it will fit just about any 27" tv still in its case.

Controls have been wired but are not attached due to the fact that I was staining.  I'm running it with an ipac4.

As far as computer goes....who knows.  Most likely it'll get my old 2 ghz desktop that I've been wanting to replace.

If anyone wants the schematcis for it I either made them in solidworks or inventor.  I don't remember, but it someone wants to see the 3d file, I'm sure I can find it.

Now on to the pictures.....
(this is my first built-from-scratch cabinet, but not my first mame cabinet so please be gentle)

[Lutus]

For that big of a control panel and trackball and spinner are a must.

[notaburger]

here's my dilemma
I have an old ms. pacman cabinet laying around that has a trackball in it (it's a capcom bowling conversion)
I was just going to use that for all my vertical, trackball, and maybe even spinner games
who knows though
I MAY add a trackball so that I can run an OS on there
we'll see

[Hockeyboy]

I like it! Well, mostly because that's how my first cab is going to be. Wife likes the look of a stained wood cabinet much better than neon and gloss black for some reason - go figure. I like that big 4-player control panel - I think for my first cab I'm going to stick with a 2-player along with a trackball setup (probably no spinner because only a few games use it, but feel free to convince me otherwise  )

Can I ask what type of wood you used for the cabinet?

[notaburger]

i used pine
in hindsight i would have probably gone with something a little harder
the stuff scratches INCREDIBLY easily
i've started coating it with clear gloss and that should help a little
another problem with the soft woods is that they are notorious for taking stain uneven, so if you do decide to go with something like pine then make sure you pretreat
the main reason i went with a 4 player setup is because the thing was going to be so big anyway due to the monitor that i was planning on using....
that, coupled with the fact that some of my most favorite games are sports games and beat-em-ups caused it to be a no-brainer for me

stained cabinets are a labor of love, but, on the plus side, they are also a little cheaper since stain is MUCH less expensive than vinyl sideart
it's also nice being able to walk down to your local hardware store and get anything you're missing, no waiting a week to get an extra 2 feet of t-molding in the mail

i too wanted something that looks like a piece of furniture
i hope to someday have a nice game room with a better pool table and a nice bar, so I decided that a stained arcade would blend nicely with that setup
good luck with your arcade, hopefully it won't take you 2 years to get to the "fun" stage as it has me

[notaburger]

one more thing too, does anyone think that i need to put a coin door on there?
i have one laying around so it's free for me
i was going to use one but then some people talked me out of it
right now i'm leaning towards leaving it off
any suggestions?

......if i don't use it....that means that I HAVE to build another cabinet....right?......i can't leave a coin door around that's not getting used......i wonder if the lady will go for that one.......

[psychotech]

Hello!

To your question: YES, You absolutely need to install that coindoor! As you have one already you

[notaburger]

what about trim across the base?
i originally planned on putting it on there (sides and front) but was told by some that it may look a little too gaudy
i don't really know
i used what i had for scrap work but it's cheap
i can always buy more
what do you guys think?

[FunWithFire]

How about putting one of those brass foot rails on the bottom, like in this picture:

[dudebozo]

yeah yeah, if you put that brass foot rail thing, it'll make it look like a tapper cabinet.  i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  i think it would look pretty cool.

[notaburger]

not a bad idea on those foot rails, i'll look into it (i wish i could make a stained cabinet that looked as clean as that bar does)
........t-minus 2 days until i install the monitor

[Circo]

Wouldn't it help if you put some varnish or something over the stain to protect it and get the gloss going?

[notaburger]

i've actually started applying the gloss
but i can't get it to look that nice
oh well
i guess it's just a matter of glossing it, sanding it, glossing it, sanding it, and then repeating that like a bajillion times
we'll see if i'm patient enough.....or if i'll just wire it back up once i drop the monitor in there
:-P

[notaburger]

I managed to get the freakin huge 31" monitor in my cabinet but since i had planned on using a tv I didn't have a way to fasten it
so instead I had to cut the sides of the monitor case off and then even had to cut a little hole in the back of the arcade for it to hang out of
after lifting and moving that 150 lb monitor 10 times I finally got it the way I wanted
I'm going to try and post pictures by tomorrow to show how it looks
I also bought some bar stools (target has them on sale ending tomorrow if anyone wants some, all makes and models, i got 2 for 16 a piece but they have some that approach the 80 dollar mark too if you want something nicer) but sadly they are much darker than the arcade
anyway
now if only I could convince myself that I need to finish it this weekend instead of playing it.......

[RetroACTIVE]

That thing looks really really beefy... Light colored cabinets always look big anyway... but if you are putting such a big tube in it it must be...

What is the approx LxWxH?

I like wood grain cabinets... looks great.

[dudebozo]

looking good.  yeah, it just takes time when you get down to the painting/staining the cabinet part.  its like, over and over and over.  but all that time and energy pays off in the end.  haha, yeah, i'm interested in your dimensions too on your cabinet.

oh yeah, speaking of stools...my friend was at a spencers store that are in the malls the other day.  he said they had music stools, like Lynyrd Skynyrd, GnR, and Guinness stools.  he said they were only 20 bucks.  sounds a lil too good to be true, so i'll head down there tomorrow and check them out.  i think some Guinness stools would be awesome to match my Guinness bottle openner wall mount thingie.