Home depot or lowe’s should have it. Lowe’s is a bit cheaper around here; a 30" x 8’ sheet of matte black is $37.82. Not too long ago I bought a sheet of white the same size and it was the same price. If they don’t have it in stock, they can special order it for no extra charge.
One more thing about applying I forgot to mention about applying it; once applied, you need to apply pressure from the center out to fully bond the laminate to the substrate. A roller is sold for this, called a “J Roller”, but a block of wood and hammer do the same thing. Hit it hard. The roller is convenient to have if you’ll do a lot of laminated projects though.
No need for prolonged clamping or pressure. Just put a piece of wood on the laminate, hit it hard with a hammer, move to the next spot (or roll if you plan on getting a roller; a wooden rolling pin works great too). Once you stick the laminate to the plywood and apply pressure to set it, it’s good to go. That, along with the durability, are reasons I love laminate. My router table is covered with it and it works beautifully as a work surface.
Those are some clean cuts its rough cutting with a jigsaw. Did you order that desk or did you pick it up locally. I’ve never seen that model at walmart that thing is just perfect size wise. If your worried about the top panel not being strong enough you can always layer it with some fiberglass sheets its messy stuff but you get it super strong and it takes a finish well.
This is what I was talking about in reference to the Weld gaps. Each joint is spot welded. I will have to Dremel the wood down in these areas to allow these welds to stay in tact. This will allow the wood to fit right against the Metal frame flush.
Once these are adjusted, it should look pretty good.
Awesome project and great progress updates. I look forward to seeing this to fruition. Can’t offer much input as I’ve only built some lame ghetto sticks myself, but work like yours is inspirational. I felt I needed to chime in to give my support. Looking good!
Decided I’m definitely going to go with black laminate for the wood. Not sure if I’ll paint the metal frame a different color yet. Thoughts on the frame? Paint it or leave it silver?
For Mame and those arcades, yeah. However, you may find yourself wanting to one day run stuff like Atomiswave, Wii, PS2, and Dreamcast emulation among others.
Most netbooks don’t have the graphical power to do this, with their basic, entry-level intel graphics. Unless you’ve got one of the more recent 10 inchers that has stuff like the NVidia ION chipset.
