It's late and I've got two months of updates to write

Thank goodness I've hardly done anything!

I've been busy with my daughter off to college, a business trip, stuff like that. The one thing I did to is make a fake backbox stuff for Doctor Who!

Hey, that doesn't look so bad, does it? Except for the translite, it's all fake. The glass is a piece of lexan that I bought for $9 at Home Depot and cut down... what you can't see are all the cracks and scratches in it because I don't have the tools to properly cut plastic. O_O; The translite is held on by two plastic clips on the top and bottom that I got from Bay Area Amusements.

The grill was a little more work. I probably mentioned that I took pictures of DW at the Allentown show in May. I photoshopped the best images together into a passable life-sized pic and printed it out on three pages. Then I cut a piece of wood leftover from our remodeling and cut out the DMD and speaker holes. Then I taped the image to the board.

You'll have to go for an extreme close-up, but in the pic on the left you can see the lines from the different pieces of tape (it really isn't that noticable). If you notice around the DMD the tape isn't behaving. You can also see the speaker grill, which is just part of the picture. The real speaker is behind that attached over a hole.

On the back, I just cut up the leftovers from the holes into strips and positioned them where I needed to screw things in. The piece on the corner was intended to hold the board into the backbox (it rotates into place) but when I put the translite in I can't get to the corners to lock them in, so I just trust that gravity will do the work for me. This is a slightly older picture... I added a few pieces of wood at the top to stabilize where the fake grill meets the plastic I-beam thing under the translite. Before it would bow out because the I-beam thing wouldn't sit straight, but now it sits properly. I was worried about vibrations harming the DMD, so I splurged and bought some rubber washers to cushion it. Overall, I think the grill and backglass look pretty good for the $12 I spent.

Tomorrow is the York PA pinball show. I used to go on Saturday, but now I go on Friday because you get an extra hour to play and there's a better selection of stuff to buy. I've been training all week with a squeeze ball so my wrists aren't completely destroyed by flipping all day. Tonight, though I noticed a DW mini playfield on eBay with the motor and cam assembly...! The trouble is it goes off at 9PM EST, which will be about an hour into my drive home. Choices: Leave early (urk!), drive from York to Gettysburg where my daughter is at school (slightly more than a one hour drive and she'll be in her dorm on Friday night? Don't think so), or try to talk my wife through it on the phone from the road while she's at her sister's house in California. Although I'm a little leery -- she did panic and bid too much on that terrible DMD driver -- it should be OK since I'll be on the phone with her and it won't be too late at night. Ganbatte!!!! \/ ^_^ \/

Holy cheese, I almost forgot... the playfield project continues with the purchase of an almost entirely intact Black Knight playfield off eBay from... the guy I bought Doctor Who from. I'll detail that folly in a future posting.