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Phoenix Cabaret restoration pt 3

cnlmoore — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:59:12 +0000

This restoration has been a serious pain in the butt. I ruined one of my carefully laminated side panels in my last effort, (See part two for that story.) and would need to make another panel. I had enough scrap material to join and make a new panel, so I gave it a try. It worked out well and I figured that after laminating it, you’d never know it was two pieces. Unfortunately during the sizing portion, I cut about 4″ more off the bottom than I should have. Measure twice, cut once, words to live by. I bit the bullet and purchased another piece of material. This time I got it right.

I carefully lined up the new, pre-cut blank on top of the other blank I had already laminated but not cut. I then used screws through the carriage bolt holes to secure the pieces in place. No movement this time.

Once secure and clamped to the saw horses I used my trim router to cut out the shape. I took about a 1/4″ per pass until I had only a bit left. Then I flipped it over and finished it off on the black laminate side. I was concerned about chipping the laminate and this worked out perfectly.

After completing the panels, I started to layout the blocking and nail it in place. I used the remaining old panel to measure locations. Everything was coming together nicely.

I also cut the blank for the new bottom piece and cut the air vent holes on the drill press. I used the blast cabinet to strip the rust of the brackets that were mounted on the bottom. They had seen the most water damage and had some serious rust. A little zinc primer and a coat or two of black and they are good to go.

I’ll let the parts dry a bit and then I’ll attempt to dry fit everything before I start fastening it all in place. Since I was planning to reuse the front section and the top angled pieces a dry fit will be important to make sure I judged the sizes and blocking placement correctly. Let’s hope so, more to come!

Phoenix Cabaret Restoration pt 2

cnlmoore — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:56:48 +0000

Picking up from where I left off with the restoration (part one), I got a postcard from Menards stating that my laminate was ready for pickup. The box it came in was huge. I got it home safely and pulled out a sheet of the wood grain laminate. To my surprise the stuff was longer than a sheet of plywood by about 4 inches.

This would allow me to cover a whole sheet of plywood with room to spare, good if you’re building cabinets, but a pain to work with for a cabaret. I cut the sheet down into usable pieces which was approximately 24″ x 55″ each. I also cut two blanks of birch plywood to size as well. The plan was to laminate the blanks and then use one of the original cabinet sides as a template to re-cut the cabinet shape. I figured I could save my self some time doing it this way. Good plan in theory. So I laminated both sides of the blanks using contact cement and a paint roller, while that dried, I removed all the blocking from one of the original panels and got all set up to route the cabinet shape. I made two errors. The first is that I should have cut the shape before laminating and then just used a laminate trimmer and the second, that I didn’t fasten the blank to the original with anything other than clamps. The clamps moved on me and the router took out more than it should have. I was planning to live with it since it was in back, but then while routing from the front side, the original panel started to crumble and deteriorate. This caused the router to skip and grind away at the panel. Needless to say it was ruined. I would use it to make replacement parts for the remainder of the cabinet, instead of just tossing it out.

After that little screw up I decided to turn my attention to remaking the cabinet blocking and cleaning up the control panel. I used 1″ x 3″ and was able to duplicate the blocking pretty quickly, using a simple jig for angle cuts on the table saw. After the parts were cut I painted all the visible sides. The control panel I just peeled or scraped off the old cpo. There was so much rust underneath it came off without much trouble. The panel would get powder coated at Pro Tek and I’d probably have to do a custom cpo as I’ve never seen an NOS cabaret cpo for phoenix.

The next step would be to locate another piece of birch plywood to use as a blank and hopefully I have enough laminate for one more panel. This time I’ll cut the shape before doing anything else. Trying to rush the work only caused me further delay! Ugh.

Phoenix Cabaret Restoration Pt 1

cnlmoore — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:50:14 +0000

I wanted to get started on this game for some time, as it was a huge childhood favorite, both in full size and on the Atari 2600. I’ve had it for almost a year now and have slowly gathered extra pcbs and a few parts necessary to get started. (Check out my other post to see it’s arrival Phoenix Cabaret Added) The plan was to do some minor cosmetic repair, clean up the cabinet, swap out the pcb and move on. I figured I could work on it during the down time of the other major projects I had going on.

I wanted to install a double jamma adaptor from Mike’s Arcade so I could throw Pleiads in the cab as well. With my limited space I’m always looking to maximize the use of floor space and those two games work well together. It never quite works out according to plan, though. The first step was to strip out all the parts, label them and stash them in a tote for safe keeping. Once that was done I could haul the cabinet into the garage and look over the damage.

Once in the garage I was able to check out the weird corner repair and some other minor damage. Apparently one of the previous owners decided that using wood filler would make a nice repair. It didn’t. Problem is they didn’t use any support in the repair and didn’t do any sanding or even a complete repair job. No big deal, I would just re-do the repair and maybe just re-laminate the sides. I’d be keeping this one after all and it was worth the effort. So I popped off the wood filler and then figured I could strip off the laminate. Nope. The laminate was firmly attached and the particle board so flaky that it just made it worse. Crap. I just made a hole lot more work for myself.

So now I’ve got to undo all the brackets and carefully break apart the cabinet so I’ll have pieces to use as templates or possibly to re-use. I wasn’t planning on such a complete restoration and wanted this to go as quick as possible. I discovered an odd manufacturing bit about centuri cabarets while disassembling this thing. There are no glue joints at all. Every panel is held in place against some blocking and with simple carriage bolts. I was able to take the whole thing apart, without damaging the major pieces, in about 20 minutes. The bottom and the cracked piece in the back were the only fallout beside the side panels. What a fantastic way to assemble the cab.

The next step would be to cut some panels and laminate them. The phoenix cabaret had laminate on both sides, no paint, other than the brackets. I ordered some wood grain and black wilsonart laminate from Menards and would move forward once it was ready for pickup.

Phoenix Cabaret added to collection

cnlmoore — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:16:57 +0000

I got an opportunity to trade my project centipede cabaret for a project phoenix cabaret. Now you might be saying that I got a crappy deal, but I had very little into the centipede as it was from a bulk buy, I already have a multipede in a millipede cab and phoenix was one of the first games I played as a kid. I played the crap out of a cocktail version at Down the Hatch restaurant in Schaumburg IL on Roselle Rd. We’d go there after soccer games and I’d sit and play with the few quarters I could scrounge from my Dad. Great fun. Plus a phoenix cabaret is an uncommon or even rare game. So I made the swap, here she is. It needs some work so I’ll be doing another complete restoration on it.