I've been wanting to build my own arcade cabinet for about 10 years now, ever since I found the arcadecontrols.com site, and I am happy to report that I have finally begun construction.

I am following the plans over at arcadecab.com almost exactly, and this blog will be a build diary of sorts for this project.  I won't go into too much detail, since countless others have already done that, and I am not doing anything very original.

I started this process earlier this week, and have made a fair bit of progress in only this one week.  Here are the photos:

Tracing the first side onto 3/4" MDF.

The first side is cut.

Everything clamped up for creating the second side.

Cut the first slot for the dado cut in one of the sides.

Shit! The router shaft slipped while routing the dado for the other side, chewing all the way through to the other side. I will patch that later with Bondo.

The base inserted into the dados and clamped up.

Adding the ledger boards to support the monitor shelf and the rest of the exterior pieces of the cabinet.

With the monitor shelf attached, starting to look like an arcade cabinet.