Hello.

Here's a late 60's cabinet, and the front edge under the plunger must've gotten wet at some point, and the top layers of the plywood have delamination and wood loss.

The whole thing when repaired will be filled and sanded and primed and repainted, so no need to worry about preserving the artwork.

Except for the delaminated area, it's all still sound, as the side wood's undamaged (and thus the leg bolt holes are fine). However, the top layers in that front area are too far gone to glue back down, and their warping upward so I don't want to epoxy either, etc.

Would you guys somehow cut the top damaged ply layers out, and splice in a new section there? How would you go about that? I don't have the means to do those complicated cuts, but I could buy thin wood and rebuild the ply section by gluing in individual layers, perhaps?

Or would you knock the whole front out and have a cabinet maker build a new front piece and glue a whole new front in? I'd rather try to patch in a new piece of ply if possible.

Or do guys scrap / burn old EM cabinets and could send me a front section?

Thanks.

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Yes, the layers have split and split away from the joints, so that you can actually pull up the top few plywood layers, and 1) no matter how hard you press, it won't go back down flat, and 2) there is indeed wood that's missing, for example in between the leg bolt holes.

I was trying to devise a way to cut out the rotted area completely, as it's not all the way through, and then build back the ply layers that were removed somehow... ?

It's not that I don't want to cut an entire new front, it's that I cannot cut an entire new front. Don't have the tools, don't know how, etc. But perhaps figuring out how to splice in a repair with new wood would be doable?

Thanks.

I think you're right, in that I need to just have a local cabinet maker make me an entire new front panel. Now I have to figure out how to get it out in one piece?

Well guys, a few of these replies showed up *after* I got the front panel off pretty cleanly and took it to a local cabinet maker and asked them to just duplicate the panel in every way. They'll call me and let me know what they think. We shall see...

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That One Dude, well since the whole thing's gonna be sanded down and the bad spots filled, and the whole thing primed and painted and stenciled, I should be good to go as far as cosmetics go. I'll look into new style the metal corner leg brackets. Thanks.

Guys once I hear back from the cabinet guys, so on and so forth, I'll gladly post the cost and post photos eventually. I'm hoping it's not more than fifty or seventy-five bucks... We shall see.

I will gladly do so. Thank you.

Making some progress. Received this back from a cabinet maker. $60. Looks great. Had to epoxy a little tear out by a couple of the leg bolt holes, but who cares, they'll be covered anyhow.

You guys use those new-fangled metal leg brackets on old EM machines as well?

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Having to used a ton of paint stripper to strip the cabinet, as I'm trying avoid sanding as much as I can, ya know lead paint. Anyoo, yeah they did a nice job for sixty bucks. Thanks.

Wow I had no idea. Hey what method and type of paint do you guys do the silver splatters with? Scrub brush and and some sliver Rust Oleum in a can?

Yaksplat I just want to thank you so much for telling me to use acetone. I had no idea it would take old 1960's EM paint off, which I assume is some sort of nitrocellulose lacquer or whatever it is.

I had been dicking around with nasty paint stripper and making little progress. Got out a roll of paper towels and a can of acetone, and got most of it off in few hours. Wow. Thank you again.

Those photos are awesome!

Hey question, do you use those new steel leg brackets on older EM cabinets? They work with the existing corner gussets?

I cannot emphasize this strongly enough through typed words, but I will *never* sand through all that lead paint or use stripper again in this application, now that I've used acetone instead.

Not only is acetone exponentially less work, even with my vac hooked to the orbital sander and a respirator, it's still kicking some lead dust out the exhaust and I gotta empty it at some point.

I am enamored with how well the acetone worked on EM paint.

I was able to get it down to near-bare wood. Probably just some light orbital 220 and I'm ready to primer.

Thanks so much. I'll post some photos soon.

Some progress photos... The camera makes the splatter look like I did too much, but really it's not as pronounced as the camera makes it look...

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I removed the spatter pics in my previous post because the lighting in the garage made the spatter look way too heavy, and the new photo below, taken in the sun, is much more accurate. I went back and looked at the old cabinet, and the spatter that I applied is about the same density as the original. None of this is a big deal, as the cabinet was pretty beat up and had a lot of grain lines and splits, which need hiding as much as possible regardless. The spatter is Rust Oleum aluminum in a pint can, applied with a cylindrical spatter brush. Need to do the front next...

FWIW lol, I have a Masters in English and Linguistics. "Splatter" and "Spatter," although originally quite different--in that you would have or create a large splatter versus a small spatter--are now for the most part considered synonymous when used in either their noun or verb forms.

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