Last post I left you with the stark image of a control panel being thoughtlessly glued into place. I will now fail to address that, and instead, stick to the chain of events.
The following took place on the 29th of April. What you see here is my attempt at filling the marquee hole. On the previous tabletop cab I had backlit, 3d printed, translucent green panels with the silhouette of space invaders and the cabs name lit up in sickly green monotone. It was pretty cool, to be honest. But this machine was on a budget. I did have some cheapo, USB powered LED lights, but I had nothing to put in front of them.
So I decided to go old school and carve it from wood.
A name. It's my nephew's name to be accurate. A portmanteau of their name and Arcade to be pedantic. I printed it out at the correct size and taped it to the marquee panel. I intended to just carve the letters away.
I have a nice little palm router that I have customised with a larger perspex bottom plate. I can drop this into a special tabletop I have and use it as a router bench. It's perfect for this sort of work.
My face. After seeing what the router did to the paper and MDF beneath. Not what I hoped for.
The paper was starting to catch fire. I needed another plan.
This is not a dead cat. He is just really old. He is also a woody woo.
Don't ask.
Plan two... was to glue the paper down, therefore making it more part of the wood below. This didn't work either. More fire. More nasty lines. Part of the problem was I was trying to remove too much wood at once. I didn't want to have to go over it again and again as I thought that would increase the chance of a slip and having to repair or start over. I ended up scoring with a sharp knife through the paper, removing the paper, then going over those lines with a thick pencil. This worked better.
It still looked terrible. I cleaned it all up with some very sharp chisels.
As I have already said, MDF is superb to work with. Really easy to carve.
With the letters looking decent I filled them in with black paint.
Went over the lines a little! A pass over with a sanding block...
And it was done! Well, not painted, but ready to finish and install.
This is another moment when you take a look at something coming together. From a pile of chunks of wood to something that actually starts to look pretty cool. A friend remarked that the cab looked good but that the drill bit choosing game it was playing didn't look very realistic.
And that was the end of that day!
What's that? Still no explanation about the big mistake? Shall we see what the next day brings?
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