What to use as a bezel for a PC monitor.

[Magellan]

Hello everybody;

For those of you who are using a PC monitor for your display, what did you use as a bezel?

I'm going to use my 21" Dell monitor, and because my cabinet will also double as my home PC I do not what to put Plexi Glass over the screen.

If you guys could show me what you have done that would be a great help.

Thanks.

[Chris]

I created my own bezel from poster board, but over time it has warped, so I'm going to do it again using matteboard.  Essentially, I just took long strips of paper, trimming them repeatedly until they matched the monitor curve, and once they did I used them as a pattern to cut out the posterboard.

For a 21" PC monitor, a Happ 19" bezel should be a close fit, but you may need to trim it as the curvature of the monitor won't quite match an arcade monitor.

--Chris

[paigeoliver]

To use an arcade bezel with a PC monitor you have to both decase it AND trim it.

Now the curve of the monitor glass is quite different, so even a 19" Happ Bezel will not properly fit a 19" PC monitor.

The closest plastic bezel I found for a 21" pc monitor (or for the 21" Kiosk monitors) is the bezels that fit the old 20" Sega monitors found in Turbo and Buck Rogers. Even that would have to be trimmed. I have a pair of those bezels, and I am debating on if I should use them, or try to make a thin cardboard bezel like a lot of Atari games have.

[Magellan]

I don't know if this changes anything but it turns out that the screen is 19"  not 21"  

Will the 19" Happ bezel be okay in my case?  

[paigeoliver]

I don't know if this changes anything but it turns out that the screen is 19"  not 21"  

Will the 19" Happ bezel be okay in my case

It may actualy be too large (and the curve of it will not match). 19" arcade monitors all have the same size and shape of tube, while 19" pc monitors vary quite a bit in actual size and will certainly be smaller than a 19" arcade monitor.

A good piece of dark plexiglass and a handmade cardboard bezel would do the job nicely (the dark plexi hides the homemade bezel pretty well).

Another option. Use a sharpy to color the plastic front (just do the part around the glass), then use a layer of foam weatherstripping as a bezel (works fine if you paint your glass).