Space Wars Cabinet Restoration
Space Wars was my first attempt at cabinet restoration...and it went pretty well.
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The two problems with the game were that someone had cut ugly notches in the cabinet next to the control panel on either side--presumably to give the players some extra elbow room--and that it was missing its side art on one side.
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I bough some white particle board that was the same thickness as the cabinet, and traced the two notches to make templates. Then, to repair the cabinet, I simply cut the pieces and glued them into place. After that, I painted the cabinet to hide the repair.
Note the notches cut beside the control panel. Definitely not part of the original cabinet design.
Close-up of one of the notches after my repair job (before painting).
Then, with lots of careful measuring, I used my templates to paint the letters, one at a time. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself!
Note the notches cut beside the control panel. Definitely not part of the original cabinet design.
As for the side art, the left side was mostly intact. I went to a hobby shop and bought some blank plastic material that can be used to make custom painting templates and I painstakingly traced the left-side art until I had a series of stencils that I could use to paint the art onto the other side. There was a loose piece of side art on the side that was intact, and I used that to match the blue paint color at Lowes.
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Pretty simple stuff...but I was really happy with the way it turned out. Too bad I never got the game to work.