Page the eighth - in which I add a front to the control panel.

Created on: Friday 29 June 2007

Phew! I'm high on paint fumes at the moment! In one week's time I'll be at LugRadio Live and enjoying a drink. This past week I've been finishing off the control panel - something I've been thinking of for some time...

To start with I fix a section of scrap MDF along the front edge with a square edged section of timber behind it for support.	More PinkGrip is used and it seems to hold very well. Note: Defender! I've been playing a fair bit of Defender - it's the reason this thing exists!
On a not-completely-unrelated note, I rescued this Dell motherboard and processor from the skip at work, scrounged two sticks of 128Mb rambus memory, added an old GeForce 2 card and a network card and what do we have? Another set of guts for an arcade machine!	The motherboard is already fixed to a steel tray and being a Dell, doesn't fit in a typical ATX case. No problem, I only need support for the cards at the back and I have lots of old rescued cases hanging around...
So here I'm chopping the case in half with tin-snips!	And it's piggin' hard work!
But eventually it gives way - mostly due to metal fatigue!	Ooh, what's happend while we were messing around with that case? Well, I fashioned a couple more pieces for the front of the control panel.
The ends are bevelled to meet the front section and where they hang over in front of the case sides	With the control panel raised you can see the construction - PinkGrip holds it all together (looks like bubblegum!) and those sturdy blocks give the panel extra stiffness. Now it's sanding, sanding, sanding!
The aim here is to smooth out the joins into neat curves.	I kinda like this shot - here, the top drawer is pulled out too.
I'm really pleased with how this is turning out after thinking about it for a year!	And paint! Ah! Painting the new panels, the inside of the doors and a few other areas that have been bugging me for ages!
The finish is looking pretty rough in this shot - well, it is rough but the flash is making it look worse - honest!	And that's it for tonight - I have to let that paint dry. I've been playing with chalks on the marquee - it is blackboard paint after all! Rather than do some permanent artwork I've decided to decorate it with chalk!
Erm, this is me sitting here right now typing this! Freaky what those paint fumes can do!

More later, Mick.