How to Build Marquee

[krisbee]

Ok, I feel stupid, because as I am building my arcade here, before I paint, I have been trying to figure out... so, how do I hold the marquee glass in?  I assume I put some tacking strips right behind the back to hold the back part in place and give strength for the glass and art to sandwich together, but then, what holds the glass/plexi in? 

I was thinking I needed to route a small slot in the speaker panel (bottom of the marquee box) and then get some sort of rubber stripping like what is used in screen doors to hold that bottom part in...

Sorry for the dumb question, but I just can't see the solution....

[lanman31337]

Divemaster sells what's called a marquee retainer.  You'll put one on the top and bottom of the marquee, and it screws into the wood to hold it in place.

[javeryh]

This is how I did it.

[Afterburner]

I dadoed a 1/4" wide slot on both sides and the top and bottom pieces to hold the marquee in.  I just use regular laser print paper sandwiched between two 1/8" pieces of acrylic.  I have a 24" fluorescent tube fixture mounted behind it for backlighting.

Once I had the paper sandwiched, I slid the whole thing down into the slots on either side until it was resting in the slot on the bottom.  Then I put the top of the cabinet on.  The top is removable and held on by 4 wood screws in case I ever need to get in there to change the light or marquee.

[QuarterJunkie]

I am going the cheap route and just bought a $2 piece of corner molding from home depot.

[AcidArmitage]

i used scrap plexi and made a translucent "L" bracket with superglue

[meany]

I bought some aluminium corner pieces from home depot.  Drilled holes in them, and painted.  $4.00

[ark_ader]

Cut a slot.

[NickG]

Some folks just use t-molding -  similar to this:



In this photo I glued two materials - 1/2" and 1/8" instead of cutting a rabbet on a 5/8" edge.  The original idea behind using this method was to make the 1/8 adjustable for different marquee thicknesses; but I ended up gluing it down.

[krisbee]

All excellent ideas!  I'm still not sure which way I am going to go... I was kind of hoping to have yellow t-molding cover the horizontal pieces of the marquee...  but at least I have a frame of reference now!

Thank you all!

[leapinlew]

I did it like Javery did, but without all the pics.

[NoOne=NBA=]

I held mine in place with cabinet magnets attached to the sides of the marquee area, and the steel plates that would be on the cabinet doors attached to the marquee with some adhesive.
To trim it out I used adhesive to hold some 1/4" x 1" molding onto the front of the plexi, and painted them black, to make a picture frame.