Tron Restoration Blog

Painting The Cabinet
May 23, 2005

Sorry for the lack of updates on this.  I have been working on small items here and there and even started to think about painting and such.  In the last update, you see I had primed the inside of the cabinet in preparation for painting.  I even went ahead and sprayed that with a few coats of 7777 Rustoleum which did look pretty darn nice.  Then I set out to figure the best way to paint the rest of the cabinet.  Spraying out of a can wasn't the answer, so using a roller to put it on or buying a decent spray gun and compressor were my choices.  From what I found on the net, the roller method, while it could work, looked to be a lot of coats of paint, wet sanding and a ton of time.  Spraying looked possible but involved spending a few hundred dollars on spraying equipment and supplies to build a paint booth out of tarp in my garage.  Then there was the cost of the paint itself.  Around that time, someone on the rec.games.video.arcade.collecting  usenet newsgroup questioned how much it would cost to take a cabinet to their local auto body shop and have them do it.  Well, I promptly emailed the guys who repainted my Dodge Stealth at S&A Auto Body in Woodsboro, Maryland.  They told me without seeing it (at least not in person, they viewed it here online) that it would be $250.  SOLD! 

So, I loaded up the minivan last Wednesday and took the cabinet up to them.  On Friday, they told me it was done.  I had the day off and drove up there and picked it up.  Let me tell you... this is the way to go.  I NEVER could have pulled off as good looking a finish as these guys did for my Tron.  They even went as far as checking all my fixes, and applying Bondo to smooth my work out where necessary.  On top of it all, they repainted the coin door as well!  Honestly, it looks almost new and I couldn't be more pleased.

Primin' n' Fillin' n' Sandin' n' Hopin'
May 4, 2005

Wasn't that a song by Dusty Springfield?

Down to the nitty gritty... literally here.  Grabbed some plastic wood from Home Depot by Elmer's and started filling in dings or areas damaged by the cabinet never having been placed on it's legs before coming into my possession.  The plastic wood comes in a tube like toothpaste and spreads like spackling.  Very easy to work with.  That swirling?  Just Dust.

Here you can see a fill in job on the front of the cabinet.  It was dinged nicely at some point in it's life, but the plastic wood and a plastic putty knife (no scratches that way) nicely rebuilt the corner.

Here you can see the inside of the cabinet with one coat of primer.  should have filled the knicks prior to this but they suddenly became much more visable in the grey color! A nice sanding with a fine sanding sponge and another coat of the primer later on covered them just fine.

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