Oak cabinet

[enderval]

I moved into a new home recently and finally got a garage to turn into a shop! My first project was to build a cabinet for a mid 70's pachinko machine I bought off Craigslist (I got a really good deal on it too!). The machine/cabinet was to be a birthday present for my step-father. His birthday was only a couple weeks away so I had a bit of a time crunch to build it. With my girlfriend's help, we managed to get it done just in time.

I tried to take pictures throughout the build to somewhat document the design etc. I first want to give credit to Whiplash for posting pictures of the cabinet he built, Click Here. It was an inspiration and basic guideline for the cabinet I built. In fact, except for the hopper and the mechanisms for opening the front panel and closing the hopper gate, the design is pretty much the same. Alas, I didn't have time to route out a place for a coaster... I also thought about doing an inlay in the front door, but I've never done that (well, most of this was new actually...) and didn't want to practice on this particular piece. So THANK YOU Whiplash for sharing your photos.

By the way, my step-dad loved the cabinet and machine. I presented it to him when he was in town last week. I'll take it to his house tomorrow and will get final pictures to post. He originally purchased a modern pachinko machine, not realizing it wasn't like the vintage machines. I bought that one from him, then found a vintage one on Craigslist. The rest is history. Now I just need to build a cabinet for my modern machine. I hope to build a ball lifter into the machine which will look really cool.

Here are the pics.


I purchased a Porter-Cable 4212 dove-tail jig to make the box joints. It came out pretty good although it proved to be a learning experience on how to properly clamp a piece together after gluing. I ended up with a couple imperfections but was able to fill them in with sawdust/glue.
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I finally got to take off those wooden feet!
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After some minor sanding of the frame, the machine went in pretty smoothly. All the double/triple measuring paid off.
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Next steps were to build the front door and the hopper. This went fine, although I had another "learning opportunity" with the door. I had already glued the shelf in place (the part the machine rests on) but hadn't already installed the front door. This made it very difficult to install the hinge correctly. I ended up getting a right-angle dremel tool so I could drill the holes, then used a small right-angle screw driver to tighten the screws. It worked out in the end but was quite a bit of extra work. I won't make this mistake next time..
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On the left is my first mock-up of a funnel to catch the balls coming out of the machine. After dusting off and using a little Pythagorean theorem, I had the funnel pieces measured out and ready to cut. The middle and right pictures show the four blocks and hardware holding the machine to the cabinet. The right picture also shows a pull-knob that pulls up on the lever to open the front door of the machine (just the glass door).
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(Brief interlude, more pictures to come shortly)

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(continued..)


I designed a hopper gate using piano wire (3/16" I think). It's just jam fit into the block on the right. The left side of the wires sit in holes in the hopper gate so they can slide open and closed. There is another knob on the upper-left side of the machine to open/close the gate.
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After routing the edges round and lots of sanding, it's time for staining and a couple coats of polyurethane!
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Two bars (with the bottom edges at an angle) got installed to mount the cabinet to the wall. I hadn't thought of this before gluing in place the blocks to hold the machine in place, so I had to use the dremel tool again with the routing attachment to route out slots for the bars. At the bottom is the completed funnel which my girlfriend built. It's made from 1/8" hard board. The sides are tied together with leather cord threaded through the holes. Too bad it isn't more visible as it looks pretty nice. She also lined the inside of the funnel with 1/8" thick rubber matting to make it less noisy. The basket in the bottom shelf was purchased at Michael's. We added some 1/4" rubber at the bottom to make it more quiet, however it does tend to let balls bounce out of the basket sometimes.
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It all comes together.
I put a couple pieces of 3/4" wood at each end of the hopper, then pushed in some more hard board with a hold cut in the middle, making a small slope. In the photo on the right, you can see a small hole in the side. This is to access the lever to flush the balls in the machine. I tried coming up with an internal lever to do this, but couldn't come up with anything that wouldn't activate the lever when opening the machine up.. By the way, I couldn't find anyone locally who could re-key the barrel lock. I ended up just replacing it. I had to do a little machining of the lock parts in the back to make it fit, but it worked out pretty good and is very functional. Oh, I ended up shortening the hopper as it was just too tall. The grain pattern inspired leaving the center high and lowering the rest of it. I used a drum sander on my drill press for the final shaping.
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That's all for now. It'll be delivered and installed tomorrow. I'll take a couple more pics once it's in it's new home.

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Again, thanks to Whiplash for posting pictures of the cabinet he built, Click Here. They proved invaluable in designing and building mine.

[Ikaria]

That looks really nice! I especially like how you did the top hopper.

[MrGneiss]

Wow, very nice!!

[yose]

Very nice

[Drunkenclam]

Looks great.
I like the hopper gate

[jmaclerran]

Great looking cabinet, fantastic workmanship

[pinball wizard]

nice cabinet !