Opinions needed: Water damaged particle board?

elekTRONarcade

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I've decided to dig out an old cab I had in storage, to convert to a Multi JAMMA setup. The cab itself has some pretty profound bloating and crumbling around the bottom, about two inches up all the way around. It was stored in a dirt floor in a shed of all places (typical). The plywood bottom is still solid thankfully.

So my thinking, and correct me if this is a stupid idea, is to cut off the entire bottom by about four inches all the way around, thereby shortening the cab by four inches. Then, I can either put the bottom back in and have a shorter cab, or put in some 1x4s around the bottom. Which would be the better solution?

BTW, the damage is so bad, Bondo won't cut it :(
 
Sounds crazy, but if the side panels are particle board, I'd patch in particle board of the same size, using biscuits or dowels, glue, then bondo the seam. Using like materials in this situation helps, when it comes to movement in the wood. Solid wood will move differently than particle board, which is more dimensionally stable. Plywood tends to warp.
 
Sounds crazy, but if the side panels are particle board, I'd patch in particle board of the same size, using biscuits or dowels, glue, then bondo the seam. Using like materials in this situation helps, when it comes to movement in the wood. Solid wood will move differently than particle board, which is more dimensionally stable. Plywood tends to warp.

+1
I had to do this on a machine and recently noted the basics of what I did in this thread:
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=224753

-Rob
 
Sounds crazy, but if the side panels are particle board, I'd patch in particle board of the same size, using biscuits or dowels, glue, then bondo the seam. Using like materials in this situation helps, when it comes to movement in the wood. Solid wood will move differently than particle board, which is more dimensionally stable. Plywood tends to warp.

Agreed, I did this for my Scramble restoration since the bottom few inches of the cab were rotten. If you Bondo the seam correctly, you'll never even know it was patched after it's repainted: http://www.flickr.com/photos/delroy666/sets/72157627616507788/with/6124307056/
 
Thanks for the replies gents. Sounds like that will be the easiest solution. In terms of drilling by hand, without the stability of a press, is there anything I should know or do to prevent any splintering or cracking when drilling the dowel holes? Bit size/type, etc?
 
If you happen to have a router with a slot cutting bit, you could probably use biscuits to join the pieces as well. I just did a butt joint on my Scramble, since the new piece was secured with a dado joint to the front and back pieces of the cab, that was solid enough.
 
Last summer I cut about 8" off the bottom of a cabinet to rescue for MAME. Turns out I'm really terrible at wood-working, but I painted the sucker black so it's harder to tell where it doesn't quite line up and I had to fill it with bondo ;)
 
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