Not sure if there is a "better" paint to use but yes, I use lacquer.

Stay tuned. More coming soon to a theater near you!!

Polish of choice is Mothers.

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Yes, you can use a small screwdriver to remove staples but once you've used a real, honest to God staple puller, you'll learn to love it.

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You'll be surprised how easy it is to remove stickers and the like with a razor blade. Needless to say, hold it at an angle and use a slicing motion.

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There are certain parts that are tough to clean. This came off the back of the light board in the head. You can use water to remove as much of the dirt as possible, but anything more than that will lighten or remove the ink. For this, I like to use a good (I said GOOD) white erasure.

This erasure also works well on anything made of paper.

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Thanks, Legacy. If I were really good, I'd wait until the entire game was done, then take the time to organize everything and present it in a more organized fashion. Seeing as that ain't going to happen, you're pretty much getting things in real time.

I leave the bottom as is. You can seal it with clear lacquer, if you'd like. I also do nothing with all the particle board surfaces.

Screened the patent text this morning. I'll leave the head and base cabinets cure for a few days, but for now, it's on to other stupid shit.

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Now it's on to the light board. If you want to do a quick cleaning, compressed air and a paint brush will get the back fairly clean and because of the white vinyl layer on the front, you can use Purple Power to clean that. Not much you can do with the black writing some dipshit put there.

In this case, the entire board will get redone. These two pics are what I'll use for reference pics to make sure everything goes back where it came. No need to tag or mark anything.

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If you look at the front of the sockets, you'll notice they have "fingers" on them that allow them to be pushed in but they don't want to come back out. To remove them, simply grab them with a pliers and while pulling, twist them back and forth.

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The rest is pretty simple. I'll sand the back with 220 grit and the front vinyl layer with 320. Then the front gets sprayed with semi-gloss white lacquer.

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And of course, the socket harnesses get cleaned, rinsed and all the sockets get a BJ with compressed air.

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Here's why I tape off the bottom before I spray.

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Here's a little trick when pulling tape. Pull the tape back onto itself. The tape is less likely to pull unwanted things up when done this way.

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Here's the look I strive for when doing the inside of the cabinet. The reason the cross brace is painted black is it had the white vinyl on the back side and looked like shit.

Too many times, however, the cabinet is going to have some excess overspray around the edges on the bottom. You can see a little of this in the back corners in the first pic, only what I'm talking about is way worse. Particle board is so pores and the paint has soaked so far in, it's damn near impossible to sand it all out.

What I do in a case like that is sand out as much as you can, tape off the entire bottom, spray the inside and once you've removed the tape and paper the following day, you can easily recreate the overspray with a rattle can.

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WTF!! Looks like we gots some custom work right here.

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Throughout the entire restoration process, you're going to find missing and incorrect fasteners and the like. It helps to have a "stash" of this kind of stuff, but if you don't, the best place to find what you need is your local hardware store. You can try the big box stores like Home Depot, but they won't have nearly the selection your hardware store will have.

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You know where I go for odd ball stuff like this? Pinbits.com. Pam and Martin have some amazing things.

I could show you all kinds of tools, John, but I don't want to bore people to death with this thread.

Bryan, Instead of painting the cabinet where the art work will be applied, I have been using several coats of polyurethane sanding between coats. It seems to do a great job sealing the wood and ends up with a surface as smooth as glass. Have you tried that, and if so do you think it is a good technique. Also, it appears that I have the same screen for the text as you do. How do you screen the patent text with the chocks on? I have to screen first then install the new chocks due to the size of the screen.
Steven

Steven, there's nothing wrong with the way you do it, but in my humble opinion, you're going a little farther than you have to. THE SURFACE YOU APPLY THE DECALS TO DOES NOT HAVE TO BE LIKE GLASS, but there's nothing wrong if it is. Here' what I do.

After sanding with 80 grit to remove glue and also after Bondo, I sand with 120 grit and finally 220 grit. For each of these steps, I'll go over each surface at least three times. With the final 220 grit, I'll go over everything at least four times. By the time I'm done, all that's left is the very, very minor wood grain. And I mean minor. Keep in mind, at this point, you'll never remove all the fine grain. While removing some, you'll simply develop more in other spots. It will never all go away. And as I said before, anything finer than 220 grit on bare wood is meaningless. I could go over it all with 320 grit but all I'm going to do is polish the wood instead of sand it.

Once primed, scuff sanded and painted, the first two pics show what my cabinet looks like. Needless to say, there's more sanding involved before artwork gets installed but that's coming up.

The next two show an extreme close up of an area that was Bondoed. The light scratches are from some scuff sanding I've already done. You'll notice the Bondoed area is "smooth as glass" and surrounding it are areas that show the fine grain I was talking about. Once the artwork is installed, you can look as close as you want to that same area and YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SEE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BONDOED AREAS AND THE AREAS WITH THE WOOD GRAIN SHOWING!!

Again, nothing wrong with the way you're doing it, but it really isn't necessary.

As for the patent text, I use the one in the last picture, not the one on the larger screen. These were made by a friend of mine, Matt Merfeld. He used one of my restores as a guide an had these made such that you simply slide the screen up against the chock, screen and it locates it perfectly.

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You are very welcome, Al. I should warn you though, you better be taking notes, cause I highly doubt I'll ever document things like this again!!

Wut. Bore us? Post more tools! That's almost tiltable porn on this site, are you kidding?

You want tool pics? Here are some f'ing tool pics!!

Now if you have to go rub one off, you can tell your wife it was because of me!!

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Almost forgot the computer on wheels and TV so I can watch Ellen at 4:00.

Almost forgot the computer on wheels and TV so I can watch Ellen at 4:00.

Well that didn't work worth shit now did it!!

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Some rate a man's "manliness" by the cylinder index. Go around your house and garage and count the number of cylinders you have in all your gas driven devices. I rate a man's "manliness" by the amount of pegboard he has in his house.

Dude, if you don't have cylinders OR pegboard, you're in deep shit!!

Now I'm going to get a little anal, no pun intended. Did you know there's a good side and bad side to a washer? Washers are simply stamped out of steel. The top side is the good side, the bottom side is the bad side. The top side will have a nice rounded edge and the bottom side will have a more sharp edge.

Tell me which is the good edge on this washer?

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Here I've used a rubber mallet to install all the IDC sockets. I've got three different sized mallets and will show using them again. I also go over every IDC connection to make sure they're tight. Here are two different sizes. In fact, I go over every IDC connector to make sure things are tight, once everything is done. It's surprising how many have come loose from the connectors in the boards from plugging and unplugging.

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And here's the final product, minus the f'ing LED's I have to put in. But if Bob wants LED's, Bob gets LED's.

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