This stuff is heavy. You definitely benefit from having someone help lug the full sheets around. Prices on the wood, the sheets I picked up were 4'x8', the 3/4" ran $32, the 1/2" sheet about $25. Essential for just over $60, I should have all of the wood I need to build the full cabinet. I may need to pick up some brace boards to run along the back of the frame, otherwise, this should be 99% of it all.
In my previous post, I mentioned some tools I would need to get, in order to make this happen. Pricing things out, it was going to be pretty up there. Router, jigsaw, sander, plus all of the blades and bits, etc. This doesn't even include the screws, glue, primer, or paint. Probably somewhere around $200 just for the power tools, luckily I was able to ask around to some friends who have done wood crafting here and there. I managed to snag a jigsaw and sander, I just have to get blades and the sand paper. I also found a router from my neighbor, though I'll have to get the right bit to cut the t-molding groove along the cab edges. Still, saving all of that money is a good thing. At some point, if I like the way this project turns out, I will probably buy everything to have on hand for future projects. One of the more obscure items I had to find was a tape measure with metric system units on it because the plans I'm using for the cab is in millimeters. Home Depot had a small 6' tape measure for about $4 so I picked that up because aside from the back panel, 6' should be long enough to measure out the rest of the pieces in one go.
Since I didn't have the wood yesterday to start laying out the measurements for the frame, I decided to start initial work for the control panel. I downloaded my preferred button layout from this site: SlagCoin. I printed out two of the 8-button layouts, but then trimmed off the two far right buttons, since I don't intend to use this cab for anything that would need more than six buttons. I also wanted to make sure there was enough room for two players to be comfortable playing on the control board.
In order to get an idea of what will be placed where, I stuck the two sheets on a piece of foam core board, cut to the dimension of the control board.
It was already somewhat late when I did this, I didn't bother to tape anything down. I still have to finish the mock up and add buttons for player selections and a couple other things. The real work will be next weekend. I'll finally get the chance to get the wood onto the saw horses, the measurements drawn out, and with luck, all of the pieces completely cut.
the strips were just not in the right place to fit the monitor at the angles it was at. So, after some thought I just unscrewed the strips and used a hammer and flat head screwdriver to rip them off. Once off, I spent a good bit of time sorting out the best spot and angle to mount the monitor, also ensuring I would have room to included a bezel and piece of glass, to cover the monitor. I finally had some luck and it looks like everything will fit as I'd like, so as it stands tonight, here is what the cab looks like with the monitor dry mounted into the cabinet.