I bought the arcade cabinet on e-bay from a local seller.  It was quite interesting transporting this cabinet and a Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet in a ford ranger. The idea behind getting this cabinet was to transform it into a Mame arcade Machine.  The issue was that the control panel was setup originally for Robotron then drilled for bloxeed and I needed more buttons to be able to play a large range of games on this machine.  That left me with two options… One option was to remove the artwork and glue from the control panel and fill all of the holes with bondo, sand, paint, and drill my new button layout. Or option two just build a new control panel which I felt would look nicer and be easier. The control console is built for poplar with a padauk inlay to cover up a mistake I made. I will try to post some update on the progress of this project as soon as I have time to work on it again.

This was my first attempt at veneering and doing a French polish. The veneer on the box is the 3rd application of veneer as the first two had to be scraped off due to the book match separating as the veneer dried. I also had issues with applying the finish mainly due to lack of pore filling before adding the shellac and being impatient. It took months of on and off again work on this box before I gave it as a late wedding present to T.J. and after some long term testing we have discovered it works as intended.

I am slowly going through and adding all of the wood working projects I have done so far. This is a pencil holder I made from red oak with walnut accents and finished with tung oil. I currently use the pencil holder daily at work and the tung oil finish is holding up great. The only noticeable ware is the pen and pencil marks on the bottom from not putting the caps on. I would recommend using tung oil finish on any project that needs a quick easy and durable finish.