Joust from scratch

[melarky]

When my first son was born, I made a slightly scaled down Donkey Kong cabinet for him (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=60545.0).  Now that son number 2 is on the way, I knew I wanted to make him his very own slightly scaled down arcade cabinet as well.  I was originally going to do a Robotron (I love that game), but my wife didn't like the side art, so she decided it should be a joust instead (she really likes the joust cabinet).

We started a few weeks ago making the cabinet (we actually made 6 of these at the same time, a bunch of people wanted to get in on them in my family, so it turned into a large family project).  I had plans of taking pictures of the process, but my wife accidentally spilled root beer on our camera a while back, so that hasn't worked for a bit (we have a new camera on the way from woot, should hopefully be here soon).  I ended up getting a new cell phone the other day that takes ok pics, so I snapped a few pics I'll share here.

The pics are of the stencils we made for the side art.  We have a CNC machine, but have never cut stencils out on it before and didn't know what material to use.  We ended up using 1/4" MDF and that seemed to work very nicely (thinner materials ended up breaking apart when lines were too close together).  I'm sure there is a better method, but this turned out alright I thought.

As for the colors, I was going to color match it from the info on proks web site, but then I realised I needed to use spray paint with the stencils, so I just did the best I could from the selection they had at lowes (the yellow isn't nearly mustard-y enough, but I still think it looks good).

The cabinet in the picture is actually my brother-in-laws cabinet (I don't have mine painted yet, I'm waiting on some latches for my control panel, once that's installed I can paint it).  As you can see, he went with a custom control panel on his (mine has the standard joust control panel).  Because of his control panel, he had to tape off the circle with the "W" in it on his arcade, but mine will have it.  Also, the 4 little dots are the registration marks and will be painted over.  There is also the ostrich eye and some detail on one of the ostrich legs that would need to be added (my brother-in-law says he doesn't want to add it, but I will probably add it back on mine).

[(+_+)]

I always though making a template to paint in on in multiple passes for a one off job pretty sick. Very nice.

[Franco B]

Awesome work on the stencils, good job! Looks great! 

[jthompson]

Very nice. My garage was a mess with just 1. I couldn't imagine a whole 6 pack.

[melarky]

Very nice. My garage was a mess with just 1. I couldn't imagine a whole 6 pack.

It was pretty fun to see them all lined up though, I really wish I had a camera during that time.  There are still 3 of them sitting out there (my 2 machines and my cousins kids machine).  Maybe I'll grab a pic of that when I get a chance.

I ordered all of the keyboard encoders and the t-molding last night, those were the last things we needed to finish our cabs, so hopefully we'll get everything soon and we can start finishing these off (I still haven't gotten my first order of parts, and I'm waiting for the latches in that order to start painting my cabs, hopefully soon).  I'll update with pics with any progress.