With no prior woodworking experience I decided to have a go at building a new cabinet for my Getaway. The original cabinet has all the typical container/import pin issues (moisture damage, poorly re-glued corners, extra screws to bandaid it together, etc). Not to mention the hacked coindoor opening and the front-right corner brace had been replaced by a home-made bracket that looks like it was made from the top section of a pinball leg with nuts welded onto it!

Wanting to keep the design as true to the original as possible, I had to try lock mitre corners. I was dreading this as so many people (including those with significant woodwork experience) seem to report difficulty setting these up. By taking my time with the set up and practicing on some scraps before running the panels through, I ended up with a result I'm very pleased with. I got a little bit of veneer tearing on the inside of the back panel but that will be easy to fill when prepping for paint. I did make one silly mistake... after I had done the front, back, and left side, I accidentally run the right panel through the router with the wrong side facing down. As a result, I ended up with two left-side panels and another trip to the timber shop.

Below is a pic of my progress so far, alongside the original, and a closeup of one of the lock mitres. I've just test fit the pieces to make sure it all fits, as there's still a number of things left to do (eg, routing for floor panel, routing for glass trim, vents on the rear panel, cut corner braces, etc).

Keen eyed observers will notice the channel routed out on the top panel. I replicated that from the original... before realising that it doesn't appear to do anything. I checked it against my White Water and confirmed that it doesn't have that feature and the back box completely covers that area when installed anyway. Can anyone explain why it's there on the original?

cab progress 1 (resized).jpeg

lock mitre (resized).jpeg

As a follow up to my previous post, for anyone else who hasn't done any real woodworking before and wants to have a go at this, be prepared to spend a LOT of time on it, and also a lot of money if you don't already have access to a decent array of tools.

In terms of power tools useful to this project, the only ones I had prior to starting this project were cordless drills, a circular saw, a mitre saw, small router, etc. Eg, the sort of tools most people have for the odd job around the home. Now however, I have a track saw, a 10" cabinet saw, a large dust extractor, a homemade router table extension on the table saw, and a bench drill press. I'm glad I made the investment in these as there's so many more projects I can do beyond pinball now that I simply couldn't consider previously.

I agree, I ran some scraps through afterwards (horizontal and vertical) before changing my router setup so I can quickly get back to the same settings next time. The router I put in my table (Triton TRA001) has a micro depth adjust which definitely helps getting the height right. Having a micro adjust for the fence also helps significantly as you don't have to keep tapping it backwards and forwards trying to land it in just the right spot.

For a new cabinet I cut the side panels horizontally and the front/rear panels vertically, using some tight featherboards on either side of the cutter, and a focus on applying even pressure while feeding them through. Cutting the side panels vertically would be extremely difficult due to their size and weight.

I used 3/4" (actually more like 17.5mm) AA Marine Plywood as where I'm located pretty much any other option was garbage (warped, covered in knots, etc). The US seems to have a far better selection (pre-COVID anyway!).