Repairing Atari Woodgrain Laminate: Tempest Cocktail Edition.

[ChanceKJ]

Ok so as some of you know I've been working on restoring a pretty beaten up Tempest Cocktail and one of the major cosmetic issues it has are some pretty gnarly gouges and scratches on the woodgrain laminated top under the glass.





As far as I can tell at one point in its life this cab had its original glass artwork broken. Some time between now and then it seems that some heartless individual decided to use the cab as a table and it looks like they dragged something heavy and sharp across the surface. I'm guessing a monitor maybe? And the really shitty thing is the damage is right in the middle of the glass where it won't be covered by the art. You can't really tell in the photos but the marks are fairly deep and quite the eyesore.

The top can't stay like that if I'm cleaning this cab up, so today I was on a mission to repair them the best I could.

I took a quick trip to home depot and snagged both a Roberts "universal" floor repair kit, and a pack of Rejuvenate ExactMatch markers.



Using a combination of those, some 99% Isopropyl, some shop towel, and a small spray bottle with water I was able to channel my inner Bob Ross and mask off quite a bit of the damage. It took the better part of an hour and quite a bit of blending but I'm quite happy with the end result.





It's Definitely not perfect, if you look at it in the right light with glare you can still see the damage, and if you know its there and go looking for it you'll see the spots. But its a far cry from the eye catching marks that it once had. Plus once its under the glass and the arcade black lights are turned on you'd never notice. Not bad for my first try at this.



Anyways, not as riveting as replacing the "vibration dampener" foam inside the cab, but it was a big win for me today, so I thought I'd share.

 

[mdeslaur]

Looks great in the pictures! Nice job!

 

[Phetishboy]

Nice work man! This is definitely the approach I would've taken. In fact, I did the same thing to a Pac-Man cabaret once, and it really was tough to tell where I fixed it.

 

[Digindug82]

Looks great, if it wasn't pointed out I would not have noticed it after blending the scratch in

 

[CharlieG]

Well done!

 

[VectorCollector]

Don't kid yourself - woodgrain repair beats a block of foam any day of the week.
Nice job. I learned something today.

 

[cwilkson]

Great job with your repairs. It looks very good. But in the future, know that crayons and patience are all you really need.

YOU NEED CRAYONS. JUST CRAYONS.

BELIEVE.

My dad was a master cabinet maker and carpenter. He made all the cabinets in our house. Beautiful cabinets! He gave me a hammer and a saw and various other tools. I really liked the saw and hammer. A lot. But as a 3 years old, I was much more successful with the saw. My mom compensated for my mad sawing skills by using my crayons to repair the saw cuts that I made in the cabinets. She worked miracles with those crayons. (And some Pledge.)

 

[Wyo]

 

[ChanceKJ]

…YOU NEED CRAYONS. JUST CRAYONS…

Haha thanks, I actually went looking for those first. Its one of those things I've seen a million times in the hardware store, but the day you actually go looking for them they are nowhere to be found or sold out.

 

[mcdermd]

Crayons have the added bonus of working as filler material.

 

[ChanceKJ]

The universal kit I bought was actually a filler as well. And it did "ok". The problem was that I couldn't overfill the scratches and divots because I wasn't going to be able to sand the excess without damaging the surrounding surface finish. So I had to build up what I could. Again, not perfect, but im damn happy with it.

 

[cwilkson]

You can "sand" the crayon fills with....a hairdryer.

You can add wood dust for body, burn the wax off and just leave the pigment, hand rub, add butcher's wax, linseed oil finish, imagination is the limit. It's an art form. I'm only a novice. My mom was the master.

 

[KazooBR]

great work! Looks really good.