Wow, it's been almost a year since I've updated the page. I haven't been idle, I painted the beast... well, most of it anyway. The paint was a terrible brown color and had a texture to it. I started out by stripping the machine down and taking it to the car wash to clean it. I then started sanding. There was a bit of rust in spots, so I took it down to bare metal. Next, I primered it, sanded it, primered it, wet-sanded it, primered it, wet-sanded it inside and out. I then painted it black using Rustoleum "Professional" paint. I don't know if I'm really happy with the quality of the paint, it looks nice, but I'm not so sure about the durability. I put about 3 coats of paint on, of course sanding between each coat. That took me most of the spring and summer. It was a really hot summer and if you have ever painted with acrylic paint you know that it just won't cure when it's hot out. There were relatively few days where the planets were in alignment, that is, when it was about 70 degrees, I had time, and I felt like painting (not fun). Anyway, I got the main body of the cabinet painted and it looks great. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the painting process. You will be able to see the new black finish a little later in this page.
The top of the cocktail machine was kind of beat up. The glass is scratched, the top had "crow's feet", the foam gasket was damaged, the wood-grain around the edges was chipped, torn, etc. and the joints on the back were coming apart. I started by removing the woodgrain around the edges then set out to make the table-top strong again. My guess is that people used to lift the table by the top when it was locked, but the table-top isn't designed for that type of stress. Here is a picture of the back of the table-top after I removed the loose wood and here is a picture of it after I repaired it. Now it was time to repair the finish on the top. Originally, the top was painted a cream color, but I wanted something more durable since the paint had cracked. I ended up laminating the top with some laminate from Menard's. The color is very close to the original. Here are some pictures of the lamination process: Laminate Applied, Some Routing Finished, Done Routing. Now it was time to replace the wood-grain. I looked everywhere for an exact replacement wood-grain with no luck. I finally settled on Melamine Edging by the Band-It corporation, a special-order from Lowes. The melamine has an iron-on adhesive just like the original wood-grain, but is a little bit thicker than the original. It also has a texture to it that the original did not have. I am actually planning on using this top on my other cocktail machine and then refinishing the top of that machine in a different color for the Mame cabinet. At any rate, since it's going to be springtime before I'm able to paint the legs and control-panels, I decided to put the machine back in working order. At the same time I replaced the player-one joystick with a Happ 4-way which is advertised as the replacement for the Ms. Pacman / Galaga 20th Anniversary Reunion machines. It was a great move, the joystick is much better than the original Nintendo one. I'll be ordering another one for player 2. I wanted to set the glass back on the top, but I needed to put the foam gasket back first. Once again, I searched far and wide for a solution. I tried some hobby foam from Hobby Lobby, but it was way too thick. Then I went back to Hobby Lobby and found some self-adhesive foam by a company called fibrecraft (www.fibrecraft.com), I had to slice the odd-shaped foam pieces into 3/8" wide pieces, but it worked out great! Here are some pictures of the machine as it sits now with some graphics I printed up to spice it up a bit: Inside, Profile, Top View.
