Here’s a couple of models I made with it so far, make sure you spin them around!

Awhile back, I bought an antique payphone on eBay, which looks similar to this one:

This phone is a bit too old fashioned to look good in our arcade. I’ve been planning on putting it upstairs in our hallway. It’s been sitting in the corner up there for 2 or 3 years now so I figured I should get around to mounting it. I don’t have keys, but managed to get into the top box and have a plan for mounting it. I’m making my own enclosure for it, which I modeled in sketchup:

Here’s a 3D view:

and an exploded view:

The plan is to make a custom TELEPHONE sign for the top, and have it light up. I’ll post more pics as I put it together.

I was planning on taking pics of everything as I went along but in the excitement I forgot to. Here’s the gist of how this was made…

Parts from Walmart:

• 8″ white styrofoam ball
• Yellow woman’s top made out of spandex (need’s to be stretchy)
• Mickey Mouse (on clearance)
• Pacifier
• Black fabric paint
• Pink cloth
• Baby Sneakers

Other stuff we had lying around:

• Wooden broom handle
• Metal coat hangers
• Pins
• Thread & Needle
• LCD monitor stand
• Cardboard shirt box
• Finish nail
• Staple gun and staples
• Velcro

You can pretty much tell by the components how this went together. I severed the arms off Mickey (see last post). We made some tubes out of the yellow to go over the black dead mouse arms. I cut some wire from the coat hangers and used them to stick the arms into the foam ball. We made the legs the same way, stuffing them in the shoes and sewing them to the body.

The bonnet thing has a piece of cardboard we cut to shape, to make sure it would stick up.

For the nose, I cut the very tip off a broom handle and put a finish nail in the end. I wrapped the yellow cloth around the wood and stapled it to the bottom. Then I pushed it through the cloth and foam ball and it stuck pretty well.

I had an old LCD monitor stand that I never used and was saving for something like this. I used velcro on the back of her head to stick it to the stand. The stand has some velcro on the bottom to keep it in place, as does her sneakers.

Here’s a couple more pics:

It took a long time, but it was worth it. Here are a few more pics:

I guess I’m off to work on the next game now. I’ll have to decide between Mappy, Donkey Kong, or Pac-Man. I think I may go with Mappy but I’m not sure yet.

As you can see from the pic above, I also put the control panel back in. Next comes the sideart…

I can’t wait to get this working again. It’s been a long time in the making.

I got the cabinet sanded, patched up, and sprayed some Kilz 2 primer on it. I did 2 or 3 coats, sanding after each. It looked pretty good:

I had gotten Behr Premium Plus for the yellow at Home Depot, and couldn’t get it to spray well no matter what I did. I thinned it as much as I thought was reasonable, and used some Floetrol. I wasn’t getting a good sized spray pattern at all, but figured I would give it a shot anyway. Here’s what happened:

The damn thing looked like a mutant zebra.

While painting, my 5 gallon pancake compressor kept running out of air. I didn’t have that problem when I did my Moon Patrol for some reason. I had to wait for it to catch up about 4 times before I finished each side. I figured maybe that waiting period caused those stripes, but I really wasn’t sure.

I couldn’t leave it like that, so I decided to get a new compressor. I got a DeWalt 15 gallon compressor. I would have gone bigger, but my garage is so incredibly small I couldn’t afford to lose much more space. This compressor stores air in the tank at 200 psi, which supposedly gives it an equivalent air capacity to a regular 26 gallon compressor. It works great, btw.

OK, with my new compressor ready I hit it with primer again to cover up the stripes. I went over it again with that same Behr paint and though my compressor didn’t quit on me it still came out looking like the pic above. I was pretty discouraged at that point but decided to push on.

I figured maybe it would help to see a bit better, as I didn’t have much light in my garage. I went and got 2 fluorescent fixtures which you can see in the next picture.

At this point, I was pretty low on the yellow paint and figured I would try a better brand to see if it would help. I ended up going to Sherwin Williams down the street and got their “Duration” brand paint, which is a latex enamel. I took the countless layers of paint off, and brought it right down to bare wood. With that paint in my gun, it sprayed about 5000 times better! I didn’t even have to thin it. With that Behr crap (does a Behr crap in the woods??), I’d guess it took me 20+ passes to get one side done. With this paint, it took me about 6 or 7. Oh, and the biggest plus is THE PAINT *ACTUALLY* CAME OUT OF THE GUN! Behold….a stripe-less cabinet:

I am SO glad I’m done painting. I will never buy Behr paint again. I’d rather cover the whole cabinet using Sharpies.

I was more focused on getting some work done on the cabinet, and didn’t take many pictures as I went along. I used a heat gun to get the old side art off. I tried some Goof Off to get the old adhesive off, which worked wonders. I followed that up by sanding the entire cabinet.

Here’s a pic of one side right after I hit it with Bondo:

I have since sanded the Bondo down. I’ll flip it over soon and do the same to the other side. I hope to have some paint on it this weekend!

Put on your bunny feet pajamas, slip under the covers with your laptop (or desktop if you are weird), and enjoy this bedtime story that I just picked up on eBay.

I’m 5 years old and want to read this story…

Look at all the crap I had stowed away inside:

I gutted the inside, took off the back door, and the coin door. I then got on my hands and my knees (sorry, no pic) and cleaned out the inside of the cabinet with the ol’ shop vac and some Fantastik.

Don’t let the weird dust floaty thingies in that pic fool you…I scrubbed every inch of this bitch.

The top support on the back of the cabinet had a big crack in it, which you can kinda make out in this crappy photo:

We all know that crack kills…

…so I had to fix this. I slathered glue all over the affected area, and shot nails haphazardly until it seemed to be structurally sound.

It’s not perfect, but once I go at it with some Bondo and the sander it should be like new.

Hmmm…what else did I do? Oh yeah… the control panel hinge was disgusting.

I put my trusty wire wheel into my drill and went at it until all the gunk/rust/rat droppings were gone:

You can see the fine lines from the wire wheel, but I really don’t care. This hinge isn’t visible, and now it’s not all full of sludge. I will probably spray it with some polyurethane to prevent the rust from coming back.

The last thing I did was to fix the bottom back panel, which was coming off a bit in the right corner:

If you take a look inside, you’ll see the problem:

You can see where the back pulled away from the 2 blocks that it was nailed to. I decided to fix this with some screws. I drilled some pilot holes for them, and drove ‘em on in.

The heads of the screws were sticking out, and wouldn’t pull in anymore. Now, if you’ve done some screwing you probably know that in some materials a screw head will sink right in, and bury itself below the surface. In this case, that didn’t happen. I pulled the screws back out, and drilled again with a countersink bit:

I went nice and deep, because I really wanted to pull this piece of wood way in, and I don’t care about the holes. They will be patched up with bondo later.

Screws back in place:

You can see how the back panel has pulled back in where it belongs. I’ll probably tack a few nails into the back from the sidepanel as well at some point.

After doing all this, I really wanted to keep going but it was getting late. I figured I’d get back to it on the weekend. This past Saturday I went to my grandparent’s house to help cleanup their yard. I got a nasty sunburn, and hurt my knee some how. That pretty much put me out of commission for a few days. I’ve been hobbling around like a 90 year old. The hobbling has now almost dissapeared, and I think I’m going to get back in the garage this weekend and start sanding this puppy. WOOF!

I hadn’t cut my grass yet this year, and it was getting shamefully high. Neighbors jogging by would throw up a little, and small children riding their tricycles stopped in front of the house on the way by for a good cry.

We had some company coming over Saturday, so I figured It was time to get my butt out there and cut it. I had one problem however…my lawnmower was trapped in the garage. I had so many arcade games in there I couldn’t get at it. I figured it was a good excuse to take the time to bust up the old water logged Baby Pac cabinet that I was going to toss anyway.

I took the restored playfield and working parts out, and put them in a safe spot in my cellar.

Here it is after I took the back door off and knocked the bottom back panel out with my foot.

I put my feet on the bottom, and pushed it forward…the bottom fell right out as planned.

(Check out the grass in that pic above, and compare it to my neighbor’s lawn!)

Then, with the cabinet still in the position above, I grabbed each side at the base of the cabinet, and pulled them apart like the Incredible Hulk. I did have to hit it a few times with a hammer afterwards, and this was the sad result:

I did feel a little bad about doing this, but there really was no saving this cabinet. It was swollen worse than Angelina Jolie’s sausage lips.

Here’s what the garage looks like from the front now:

This is after I pulled the lawnmower out and cleaned up a little. The lawnmower is normally on that left wall where the broom is.

I actually have a tiny bit of space now! I think I have enough room to lay my good Baby Pac cabinet on it’s side to work on it. I think I’m going to repaint it, but I’m still not 100% sure if I will, as it’s in pretty good shape already.

While I was busting up the cabinet, a neighbor was riding by on a bike with his kids. He stopped to ask if I was selling any games, and I told him how I had to make room to get the mower out. His kid cuts lawns in the neighborhood, so I ended up having him do it. It was perfect timing, with me being lazy and all.

Now that I have a little more room, I think I will be working on getting that good Baby Pac cabinet restored soon.

It’s going to look pretty cool on top of my Baby Pac-Man when I get around to finishing it. There’s a 7-11 down the street from me. I think I’m going to head there at lunch time and see if they’ll give me a free refill.

Here’s what it looks like around back:

I saw other cups in this series before on eBay. I should have bid on them…I think there was a Donkey Kong and a couple other games. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those now.

If you know anything about these cups, please educate me, cuz I be needin’ some o’ that there ed-ja-ma-kay-shun. We ain’t much for fancy book learnin’ in these parts.