I thought I would add the story to maybe help someone who may attempt this in the future. I've never used Formica or a router before but I'd say one side was fairly straight forward. The centre pieces are going to be the tricky bit.
Day 1 - MondayI emptied most of the cab again:
Cleared a big space in the garage:
Lightly sanded down the side of the cab with some fine sandpaper just to get rid of any bumps, and brush any dust off:
Formica time!
Unwraped the Formica, and let it flop level:
Then placed the cab on its side and drew round the cab adding an additional 1/2 inch all round:
Then cut it out with a stanley knife and got a basic template. Then brushed down the Formica to remove any dust:
Day 2 - TuesdayStuck some glue on both cab and Formica. I used Thixofix Eco which is really good stuff, and non hazardous. I used a foam roller to get a nice even spread. A good idea is to use a new foam roller on both cab and Formica:
Then cut some plastic strips, approx 1/2-1 inch and placed them on the cab so that the two parts do not touch:
Waited until the glue went clear, and then placed the Formica on the plastic strips. Moved into position and then pushed the Formica to the cab using a small wallpaper roller, and went along and removed each strip until the Formica was bonded to the cab:
I then got the router out with the flush trim bit, and cut off the excess Formica. The trick seems to be to let it glide round the cab without applying any pressure. But boy is it messy!
1 side done:
Day 3 - WednesdayMade a couple of minor errors with the second side. The t-moulding edge had some uneven bits, and because the router follows that line, those uneven edges show up on the Formica. Unless you really look hard it's not noticeable, but generally happy with the second side:
The centre pieces were an absolute pain, as I knew they were going to be. The top piece took 3 attempts and the bottom piece took 2 attempts. The problem was getting nice clean lines and accuracy with a stanley knife. So on the final attempt I tried a different tact and it worked out ok.
I marked out the correct sizes for both pieces and added 1/2 inch, and cut the 1/2 inch shape out.
Then I clamped the Formica to the edge of a table, aligning the correct lines on the Formica to the edge of the table, and then used the router to cut nice clean, accurate lines. It was also handy just to shave a tiny little bit off the end to get it to fit right.
Overall very happy with the middle bits. Just need to glue them tomorrow if all goes well. I'm going to overlap them slightly (as above) so it looks fairly neat. I've seen someone use Formica on a Baby Pacman before and a gap was left which looked a bit wrong.
Then just got to cut out the coin door, grills, buttons and locks. I can use the router for most of it, but not for the grills. I'm going to have to do this semi-by hand, so I hope I don't mess it up :-) They are hidden by the grills so it's not the end of the world if I do
Day 4 - ThursdayDamn that was hard work!
Routing Formica makes an incredibly mess! I've spent hours tidying up!
I tried the straight edge for the front but just couldn't get it quite right, so I cut larger sides then used the router to trim bits off until it was spot on.
It was going to be pretty difficult using the plastic strips on the front so I improvised and cut out a template using some clear plastic so I could get the holes spot on, but mainly because I could use it as a barrier between both glued front pieces. Once the pieces were in place, I could press down on the Formica and slide the plastic out. It worked well :-)
I also marked out the coin door minus 1/2 inch so I could take a good chunk of that out beforehand.
Once fitted, I routed the rest of the coin door hole.
The difficult bit was the oval shapes at the top. Formica is difficult to cut so I wasn't even going to attempt to cut out a shape like that. So I cut out squares. I could route some of the speaker grill holes, but the base of the router is quite big so restricted movement. It looks ok, but more like a foot shape on each side than a oval :-) It's hidden by the grills anyway so no issue.
Cutting the holes was nerve racking and I did this prior to fitting. So I used my template above by placing it over the Formica to mark the holes, then used tile/glass drill bits at a slow speed to make the holes.
I used a small glass drill bit on the buttons to make a pilot hole, then a paddle bit to make a larger hole big enough for the router and routed out the rest. The only problem was the main leaf buttons as they had a small edge, so the router could only cut a smaller hole. I've left that for the moment but need to revisit when I figure out how I can increase the size of the hole.
