Wood is Cut!

Saturday September 12th is the next local coin-op auction. I've been looking forward to this auction for awhile now. I'm picking up some parts and set (yet again!) a goal of having the cabinet completed by the time this auction rolled around. (Worst case scenario the day of!) No big secret my time and skills are extremely limited, yet I push through. Over the last few weekends I tried to piece together a monitor shelf that didn't exactly work out. But I did get my bezel painted in a nice flat black....and managed to do so without any drips.
My father-in-law was kind enough to cut a PROPER wood shelf for me. And this week I plan on going to the local home depot to get the screws and wood I need to make the supports. To re-cap earlier posts on this blog I had a ton of issues trying to figure out how to mount this monitor. For starters it's about 115lbs, so I require help to mount it into place. It fits tightly into the cabinet, and does not allow much room to make any corrections. When you combined the fact that the monitor is as heavy as it is, with the inability to move it once installed it was very difficult to figure out the angle it needed to be mounted at. My brother-in-law suggested that we just eye ball it and give it a shot! Which to be honest did make sense at the time. But again not having the materials and tools available the monitor just sat around for months after that. With frequent trips to the basement and perhaps an hour or two of staring and thinking I figured out what I thought would be the ideal method of installing the monitor. I removed all the wood from inside the cabinet. I had my father-in-law cut to size a shelf that would rest tightly inside the cabinet. Once installed I was able to move the wood up and down, and angle it as needed.I then placed the back casing of the Sony PVM monitor onto the shelf itself. From that point I reinstalled the wood that normally the monitor would bolt onto. This served as a guide to insure the monitor fell perfectly in the middle. It also served as a guide so I would know how much more forward the monitor would need to go. The back casing of the PVM monitor perfectly represents the width and height of the monitor, however the monitor still has about six or so inches that it protrudes forward. I think now I have "cracked the code" and should be able to finally complete this long overdue project. I'll need to stabilize the shelf using some 2"x4" supports. I'd like to mount the shelf to the cabinet from the outside. I purchased six 3" bolts that I plan on using. Each of the supports would have 3 holes drilled into them, then marked from the inside once I have the shelf leveled. I'll simply put the wood into place, drill through the cabinet and mount the shelf from the outside. I can honestly say that yes, perhaps I took on more then I should have with this project. And yes, if I had made this a priority perhaps it could have been finished in a month. But all in all I enjoyed this project. I've built something that all be it took a hell of along time I can say I am proud of. I look forward to having the guys over to catch a UFC PPV and fire up the MAME cabinet. It's also given me the confidence to take on other projects such as the three bartop machines I purchased. As always I will post the pics once I take them.