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In Progress Rocky & Bullwinkle Shop Log

Haha!! Nice terminology Dan.

But i've got almost everything I need now to make a peachy one. It won't be original of course but it'll look pretty damn nice in my opinion. :-D

Ramps turned out to be in good order - the only busted one was the WABAC ramp which I got a NOS replacement for.
 
Nnnnngggggnnnn........

Don't get me started on the Nell Log Assembly again.

It'll be the final job that I ever sort out I suspect.
 
Popped out at lunch to visit @Davey D who had very kindly agreed to make arrangements for my spare R&B cabinet to have a lick of paint.

The whole cabinet hasn't been painted because right now the objective is just to prove that the colour match is good. Also they didn't flat back between coats because again it's less about the finish and more about colour matching.

Here's the outcome.

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Colour-wise it's almost a perfect match for the top blue seen on the new decals:

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So yeah, i'm very happy with that. Thanks to @Davey D for his help.

Next objective is to finish the sanding on my donor cabinet so I can then get it over for priming and painting. It's pretty much done apart from a little more work which needs doing on one end and then a final going over with 600 grit. Weather permitting I hope to get it done over the weekend so I can ship the cabinet for painting next week.

Then it'll be a case of waiting my turn until I can be fitted in. After the painting is done we should be full steam ahead with the rebuild.
 
When you wood fill that cab do you sand it back to wood first?
 
Exactly as Rudi said - yes!! :)

The cabinet in the picture above is an old one which had the back end missing. It wasn't cost effective to repair so my friend agreed to store it for me, and as it turned out it was a perfect candidate for testing the paint colour out on.

For the new cabinet i've spent rather a lot of time sanding it back to bare wood before filling, sanding, filling, sanding and just repeating the process over and over until it's pretty much back to an original pristine state. It's still not finished even now and the crappy weather isn't helping much. I'm hoping to get it finished off this week so I can get it shipped over ready for painting.

The final going over on the exterior will be done with 600 grit to hopefully give it a mirror smooth finish.
 
Your prep and sanding on your primary cabinet wood looks really good. My cab is similar to your spare one above, wood missing that's been painted over as I'm not re-decalling my machine I need to undo the bad cover up work first. I am assembling the tools and products for the job but don't want to stop the machine being playable at the moment.
 
I have to say that doing it right is taking an age and the poor weather combined with only being able to work outdoors is slowing me down. My Rocky & Bullwinkle has been stripped and in an unplayable state now for almost 10 months and it's really not much fun not being able to play it.

But I figured that as i've come this far it doesn't make sense to rush it and do a crappy job. The cabinet will hopefully be prepped for painting soon and with a bit of luck the rebuild will be starting in the next couple of weeks or so. Once the cabinet is painted and re-decalled I suspect the pace will increase somewhat, and in the meantime i'm slowly collecting parts and preparing other jobs.
 
You're right dude, and even in the perfect environment/workshop these things take A LOT of time to do, and you best do it right because any mistakes will drive you nuts forever.

Quick question, how come some R&B cabinets are blue and others are black?
 
Apparently the standard colour for the USA market was blue but a Europe-based distributor asked for some in black.

Most the black ones ended up in Europe but I think a few also ended up in Canada too.

It's mentioned in the IPDB: http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=23

It's probably a little controversial but mine won't be factory original as the cabinets are screen printed and you can't buy official decals for these machines. Instead I managed to secure some custom decals from someone on Pinside. The artwork is largely true to the original but he adapted it to give it more depth. As a result of this the blue colour i'm having it painted also isn't totally faithful to the original, but as the artwork now has a gradient blue in it there really isn't much point in trying to colour match the original.

I quite like the look of the decals and I think they're a big improvement over the original black 'gloomy' artwork.

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In truth i'm not going for 'factory original' but just to make it as nice as possible and remove some of the issues it had. Number 1 on the list was removing the nasty shark bite at the back, but in this case it was more cost effective to get a donor cab than trying to patch it up.
 
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Managed to finish sanding back the backbox last night. A few gratuitous photos.

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Hoping to get the main cabinet also finished in the next couple of nights so I can get it shipped out for painting before the weekend.

Oh, and I got the tumbler running today. Not sure how long that's going to last as it's quite noisy and as I don't have a workshop I have a feeling the wife isn't going to want to put up with the constant rumble of it running.
 
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Managed to get out in the garden for a couple of hours tonight. Main cabinet is also now done and ready for painting.

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Any surface where a decal is to be fitted has been sanded over with 600 grit and is mirror smooth. I've also done the same on the rear and top of the cabinet.

The interior obviously hasn't been sanded to this level but as it's just being undercoated and sprayed blue I don't really think that matters. Both parts of the cabinet are now packed away. I've protected the corners with some custom-cut cardboard and then wrapped the lot in shrinkwrap so that I can hopefully minimise the chances of me dinging the corners whilst transporting it tomorrow.

The tumbler has been running for a couple of days now but i've been turning it off at night as the noise travels. Most the parts I put in there are already nice and shiny with the exception of the transformer brackets which still have some of the lacquer on them. I'm going to give this load another day and then take a look. I think I might have to get the dremel and polishing compound out for the transformer brackets to give them a final clean but otherwise i'm impressed with what the tumbler has achieved. Will hopefully post some photos tomorrow night.
 
The cabinet is now safely stored at my friends workshop and hopefully will be getting painted up in the next few weeks. He is doing me a massive favour so naturally it's being fitted in around other work, and of course we need to leave plenty of drying time between coats to allow for flatting back and spraying the next coat.

In the meantime it's time to start getting the other stuff sorted out for when it arrives back. First up I broke out the Dremmel to give the transformer mounts a bit of a polish up.

Both my original brackets and the ones that @BigIan kindly donated were caked up in some horrible brown substance. I'm told that it's a lacquer that the transformer is dipped into during the manufacturing process. Well I can say for sure that it's a proper nightmare to get off.

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I ended up using the Dremmel with both black and white compounds to get these polished up. The black is more agressive so I used that to remove the majority of the lacquer before then giving it a final going over with white and then finally some autosol to get it shining a bit more. Not quite the mirror finish i'd have liked but still a million times better than how they looked before. I also gave the mounting bolts which secure the transformer to the cabinet a bit of a polish up too.

Hoping to grab some high-heat spray paint in the next day or two so I can give the transformer block a bit of a spruce up too.

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I've also had the ring mounts for the wiring in the dishwasher and they've come out looking cleaner although still quite yellow. Not sure I can do anything about that; I suspect no amount of cleaning will get them back to their original colour, and that's presuming they aren't meant to be the 'aged yellow' that they look. ;-)
 
I gave some of the creamy plastics (star rollovers) a bath in boiling water/strong bleach solution it appeared to whiten them up a bit.
 
Thanks @astyy, I might well give that a try.

Did a bit more 'shiny-fication' this evening. This isn't finished but even after a first pass it's looking lots nicer than it did originally. The mains box was just a dull grey metal and just 20 minutes with the dremel and some white compound has made a fair amount of difference.

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Also polished Bob a bit too

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Bob will be carefully set when the cabinet is reassembled to make sure he behaves as the utter b'stard that he should.

Sorry Dan, but it's just how it's got to be..... ;-)
 
How on earth did you manage to polish bob? :eek::eek::eek:

All the ones I've seen are made of lead and therefore too soft to polish. Last time I tried it just started ripping big chunks out of him.
 
I'm not sure but i'm presuming this one is brass as it's got a lovely deep yellow colour to it. I was probably a bit cavalier because I just slung it in the tumbler and it came up pretty shiny just doing that. A little careful buffing with white compound and a felt wheel followed by some autosol and it was gleaming.
 
Ah, yours must be brass then as I've put bobs in the tumbler before and it never works out well lol.
 
Handy to know for future reference. I got lucky on this occasion and my hunch turned out to be correct.

I presume if you tumble one made of soft metal then it comes out looking a bit worse for wear?
 
As I said - very useful to know about that for the future ;-)

I agree that the corn cob media seems to be a little on the slow side to take effect. Most of the parts I tumbled were left in for about 3 days although granted it was only running during the day.

I've ordered some of the walnut media now so will be interested to see how that compares.
 
Time has been a bit limited again this weekend but I did find the time to prime and paint the transformer block. Once that was done I cleaned up the bolts that @BigIan kindly donated and got the whole lot put back together. Didn''t bother cleaning the wires from the transformer as they weren't actually that bad.

Looking a bit smarter now.

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Had to start work at 6am this morning in order to do firmware upgrades on some gear at work. The plus point with this of course is that I got to knock off at 2pm so after a little shopping and picking the daughter up from school I managed to get outside to start doing a bit more polishing.

The next candidate was the metal PCB mounting plate from the back of the back box. The size of this part meant that the dremel wasn't going to cut it so I broke out the drill and used a tapered mandril and a couple of different wheels to get to work. So far i've used a sisal polishing wheel with black compound to get a partially shiny surface, and then i've then gone over that with white compound and a loose fold wheel.

Unfortunately sods law dicates that the lovely weather we had all sodding day had to come to and end. It started to sling it down so I didn't get it finished off fully. However, here's an couple of 'in progress' shots which shows the comparison between the miserable boring grey of the original metal and the nice shiny bit that has been done thus far. This is before i've even had to touch it with autosol or brasso. Once it's all done and lovely and shiny then i'll most likely spray it with clear lacquer to seal it (making sure that any earthing is maintained by masking those parts off before painting). I might also end up using the dremel to just tidy up here and there, but the lions share of the work will be done with the drill.

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Still needs a fair bit more work of course but you get the idea.
 
It was a 3:30AM start for me today. Boooo!!

Good news was that I knocked off from work at lunch and even had a little time this afternoon for more polishing.

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It's pretty much all shiny now. The picture above doesn't really do it justice because it's laid on it's back and the ceiling above it is plain white. There's still a few darker patches on it and if i'm honest i'm not sure what they are. But I guess that more white compound and a loose stitch wheel should shine it up nicely.

I think I might need to invest in a new wheel though as the one i've got it black from use and I don't think it's doing the best job any more. Either way I reckon another hour or so should see this done and then I can lacquer it in readiness for it being refitted back into the cabinet.
 
I was always crazy.

My love for the shiny is all down to @Nedreud. And let's be honest - i've got sod all else to be doing whilst I wait for the cabinet to be repainted. :rofl:
 
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