Some Nice Touches

With the painting wrapped up, I was able to progress with a few smaller, but important steps. First, I installed the coin door by drilling the necessary holes with the door in place and then securing it with 11 bolts painted black. Simple. Then, I reattached the keyboard tray and speaker grill panel. Also simple. Next, I mounted the marquee light upright using some leftover 'L'-brackets in the front and back. Then, I attached 3 of the 4 'L'-brackets (painted black) that will be used to secure the marquee and the bezel. The brackets that secure the bottom of the marquee and the top of the bezel, I mounted together to the marquee rest, forming a 'T'. I also mounted the bracket for the bottom of the bezel to the bezel rest. The reason I didn't mount the top bracket was because the marquee doesn't quite extend left to right and some light shines through, so I want to mount some black pieces of wood on the sides to clear that issue up. I will do something similar with the bezel, but that will be more for actually securing the bezel than for any light issue. The marquee rest is angled, so the marquee itself fits nicely between that and the bracket.

The last bit was putting on the t-molding which looks soooooo nice. This wasn't too difficult either. I just used a rubber mallet to tap it in with a piece of foam padding in between so I didn't scuff up the t-molding. I had a helper keep the t-molding straight because it tends to twist on its own and doesn't like to go in as nicely. Anyway, here are the pictures!

Here we've got the coin door installed as well as the speaker grill and keyboard tray mounted.

A close-up of the coin door. This is an original Nintendo coin door off a Donkey Kong machine.

The speaker grill is hinged to allow access to the keyboard tray. This gives easy access to PC functions.

Here we see the marquee light mounted.

Another angle of the light. There is another bracket in the back holding it in place.

Here is my brother's coin door. It looks much nicer than mine, although it is not a Nintendo coin door. It is from the same era as the coin mechs are quite similar. The only big difference is the size of the door and that it opens from the right side.

Full body shot of my brother's cabinet.

The two of them together. His speaker grill doesn't have the latches on yet (that's why it looks sunken in). Also from this angle you might notice that the front bottom corner of the blue cab is different than the orange cab. My brother's is actually more accurate. I accidentally incorporated the bottom 'box' as part of the sides of the cabinet (it is actually supposed to be set in a little).

Here the black brackets are installed allowing the marquee to be placed.

With the lights out and the marquee light on.

A clearer shot of the marquee light.

A close-up of the black metal brackets.

T-molding installed.

Another t-molding angle.

T-molding from the side.

Here's the bezel held in place just for fun.

And from an angle.

Finally Painted Blue!!!

Well, it's 6 months coming, but it was worth the wait. The cabinet is now a beautiful Nintendo blue (actually it's a Dunn-Edwards 'Sanctuary Spa' color). For those enquiring about paint colors, the 'Sancuary Spa' can be seen below and looks very nice. I couldn't tell you how close to the original color it is, but I don't think that matters too much, it looks great. My brother's cabinet (the Donkey Kong 3 reproduction) is also Dunn-Edwards and the color is called 'Bright Mango'. We went with Dunn-Edwards because it's the best. One quart went for around $12 and was plenty to cover the cabinet. In fact, for the blue, one coat probably would have sufficed as it covered very well, but I went ahead with a second coat anyway. The orange didn't cover as well with the white primer underneath (at least for the parts we've painted thus far). It took about 6 coats to really cover well, but we'll still have plenty with the 1 quart. A tip we got that we'll try out when painting the rest of his cabinet is to tint the primer with some of the final color. That is, mix a little orange in with some primer so we don't have to put as many coats on later. I'll let you know how that goes next time.

One last thing, you might be able to see in the head-on picture below that I painted the routed edge of the cabinet, half black and half blue. This is because in case the t-molding isn't exactly covering the entire edge, you won't be able to tell because the edge is colored according to the color of the side it is closest to. Till next time, here's the beautiful cabinet.

Finally Some Real Progress

Well,
I had all day to work on the cabinet this Saturday and actually got a lot done. More done on my brother's cabinet than my own, but nevertheless, progress was made. The black paint I had used originally was a disaster. We had used what Marc had handy, which was 10 year-old black enamel paint. It was really horrible to work with and held us up with making any more progress. So to remedy the problem, we primed over the black enamel and painted 2 coats of Dunn-Edwards black semi-gloss. Now it looks great! Meanwhile, we built my brother's cabinet which had been painted beforehand. It came out great as well except I made a mistake screwing in the bottom of the control panel section to the coin door section and the screw came out the front. That really sucked because they had done about 6 coats of orange on that piece, and now have to redo it. Anyway, the blue paint comes next for me and then the cabinet is pretty much done, just some electrical work to do and it'll be good to go. Here's some pics of the black on my cabinet and the two cabs side by side.

It's Been Awhile

No, I haven't forgotten to work on the cabinet...it just seems to rain every weekend. I've moved the cabinet out of Marc's place (he's moving soon and is a pretty busy guy), and into my parents' garage which has become an arcade assembly plant. See my brother is building his Donkey Kong 3 cabinet there as well and he also recently bought a nice Street Fighter II: Championship Edition - Hyper Fighting Turbo machine (that's a mouthful) for $150!!! It was a steal, I'll post some pictures. Anyway, I'll be working on the cabinet this Saturday if it doesn't rain and should be close to finishing up.

Thanks to Marc for all the help and the storage space for the cabinet!