After a couple glasses of wine the other night my buddy Barry "the human clamp" and I laid out the button holes and drilled them.
After work today I test fit my over/under coin door out of my other arcade machine into the cabinet. It will probably live in this one instead as the other will be turned into a dedicated 1 player machine and I plan to do something "funky" on the coin door area of that cab. This one is turning out more like an attempt at a partial restore. Coin doors are nice.
Next I set the stripped joystick housings down on the CP and traced them. 1st I cut out the middle area that will pass completely through the MDF with a jigsaw. No pictures. I must have been excited to get going. Here are the plastics test fit in those holes.
While they are in there trace with a sharpie so that I can route em by eyeball. Professionals make a jig. Someday I should make a jig. For now I just go slow and do it by hand.
Test fitting
Focus! Focus! well you get the idea even tho it is blurry.
Top piece test fit. You'll notice I enlarged the holes. Not 100% sure about this but sometimes this is what you get when you work without a plan.
Fits well enough for rock and roll. Wood glue in the areas that won't squeeze out into the button holes or onto the sticks and start clamping with buttons and clamps.
Well that has to dry overnight so I took the time to post up everything to date. More to come soon.
Next steps:
- remove screws along top of CP that were used to clamp lower alignment piece
- drill 3 more holes for p1, p2, menu
- wood filler
- sand
- sand
- prime
- paint
- punt