The Bondo Experience

Alright, So enough dragging my heels I started and finished the preliminary finish of Bondo. I had heard of this product in the past but had never put the two together until several posts from others restoring arcades had mentioned it. I had some good sized dings that needed fixed but I was thinking Wood filler but all the posts I saw suggested otherwise. I went ahead and purchased a quart of "Automotive" Bondo from walmart it was about $12 and was much more than I would ever use.

So I cleaned up the cabinet a bit surveyed all the damage, I used a sharpie to circle the spots on the sides to ensure i didn't miss anything and simply decided I would do just a side at a time. I also filled in the holes used for the horizontal mounting of the monitor, and just left the holes for the vertical mount. To those of you who have never used bondo before ensure you have good ventilation, the fumes this give off are obnoxious and can leave you with a headache! I am doing a restore in my basement i had to put a fan at the bottom of the stairs, open the basement door and the window in the kitchen adjacent to the door and suprisingly this worked well, it appears the fumes act like heat and rise and the smell was much more tolerable; though apparent it didn't give me a headache.

My biggest concern was on the back where it appears the machine was moved at one time without the back on that took a good size chunk out of the side board as it was not sturdy enough to support all the weight of the machine on itself. I needed to recreate the missing section, it wasn't thick enough to put a nail in to act as re-barb but i had to do with what i had. Now I understand this is not what Bondo is made for and that if the pressure was extreme enough would simply break that section out, but as the back is being fixed an a new lock is being placed It will never have the same pressure on that point again therefore I have little worries.

As you can see from the photos i started out by using two clamps and a piece of cardboard to line up with the exterior face of the board to give myself some backing to simply fill in, It worked out nicely and the cardboard came off easily leaving me with a flat surface on the outer edge. I let it dry and a little later applied another coat over it to fill it in a little more, with bond i would rather have to much than too little when it comes to sanding it out.


The next concern was the base board in the front of the machine, it appears it saw allot of people in

its years of use in the public. The edge of the board was pretty beat up from peoples feet kicking it over and over so i put a board directly under it to create a flat surface, then applied the bondo, it really didn't work out as well as I wanted it to so I just ended rounding the bondo out from the edge to create similar to a speed bump along the bottom edge and figured with that much excess i should be able to sand it out straight.

The top part of the cabinet took the most work but the least I'm concerned about, the plys started coming up from how old it is so i ensured the edges were squared off and simply used the bondo as a filler and it took a lot!!!! now this is the very top of the machine, again this is not what bondo's intended purpose was for but then again, no harm will ever be caused and when all sanded out I assume there will be some dips but I'm not going to focus to much on it as it will just be painted black making it more difficult to see.