John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

Fixing to start restoring a cabinet with stenciled artwork.  The cab has sustained quite a bit of water damage, but I've been told it's salvageable.  Do I bother with painting the whole thing or do I put laminate on it and attempt to stencil new artwork on it and hope it sticks?

Please provide pictures of the water damaged area. We will be able to better assist after know what the extend of the actually damage is.

https://instagram.com/p/6Vc2kMP8zV/?taken-by=xaticom
https://instagram.com/p/6VcrrvP8ym/?taken-by=xaticom
https://instagram.com/p/6VcmLqv8yR/?taken-by=xaticom

I'll take more pics when I can.

The 3rd pic looks the worst! I think you will need to cut out part of the wood. You can patch it with some new wood. There is a method to glue the two pieces of wood together, sand smooth. I hate to see this side art get lost. Try to clean up the damaged area, as much as possible first. You might only have to replace 4 - 6" strip along the bottom.

If you really did not want to sand it all. Do a wood patch and Laminate over it. It could save you TONS of time on the wood work. Are you going to keep the original space invaders? If you are going to Mame it, you could just do a quick wood patch and use Laminate. 

I am not gong to MAME it.  It's going to be a restore with a Braze kit.  I was told that the particle board could be repaired with drywall mud and the plywood could be repaired with bondo.  My thought was to repair the damage, get some red laminate for the sides and kick plate and restencil.  I could just paint the top and back.

DO not use drywall mud! Bondo is good, it drys fast and can sand the same day. I used Durham’s Water Putty. It worked really great but took about 24 hours before I could really sand it. So it added a lot of time to the repair.

If you glue the patch in, bondo, light sand. You should not have a problem applying the laminate at that point. If you have the stencil to repaint the side art, then I think it would be really good. using red Laminate will also cut down on painting time. I say go for! IMO you would be saving DAYS of sanding and painting.

For me, with my wood patch's I spend Hours sanding. After I painted I found out that I needed to sand even more. I really think if you patch the wood, Bondo and sand smooth maybe only down to a 100/120 grit it will work out really well. IMO the expense of the Laminate is worth the cost in hours and days some of us spend on the wood work alone.

I am sure there will be someone to disagree. Some people are very specify, purists and want everything original or a perfectionist. I think you should have great results and save lots of time with this method.

Also, see if you can get some others to chime in. Let it be know that I AM A NOOB! Most of my wood working skills are from working on house's. 

restoring to factory is one thing if the cabinet is in good shape, but if it's in this condition,  using materials to possibly make it stand the test of time better, is good in my opinion.  Keep this machine around longer if  possible so more people can enjoy it after I'm gone.  if i go laminate, the next question is, how to get paint to stick to it...

I was speaking to my dad about this.  He owns a cabinet shop and uses laminate daily.  He said you could use automotive spray paint, but you'd have to put primer on first.  But I agree with the others.  Laminate saves a lot of time over painting.