The Mellotron Group

It was a bitch getting that cabinet right. There was far more to it than  
the photos show. Along the way I took it outside and spackled the entire 
cabinet  inside and out, let it dry and then sanded the whole mess off. That 
appeared to  fill the last of the little divots. Then the shellac and rubbing 
out started.  All of the cracks were repaired with West Systems epoxy 
injected under pressure  and clamped. The chip board was strengthened with thin 
cyanoacrylate in all of  the bonding areas not repaired with the epoxy and in 
any other areas where the  material seemed to be crumbling or overly porous. 
Prior to Bondo being applied,  the holes were soaked with cyno to form a 
structurally sound bonding surface and  then a mixture of fiberglass and 
rovings was applied in the large areas where  the back panel had come apart. Then 
it was all smoothed with the Bondo and  sanded to an even surface.  The back 
panel was replaced with MDF and the  edges were reveneered. I'm pretty sure 
the cabinet is as strong or perhaps even  stronger than when it was new.
 
There were a bunch of "pinhole" filling sessions, and  I kept finding more. 
It seemed like an endless task, so...

Finally I decided to spackle the whole thing and sand  it off. I've used 
this technique when filling pinholes in fiberglass before  painting.
 
What remained after sanding. This  worked.

Finally the shellac gets applied inside and  out.

Once I got it into the paint booth and squirted primer  on it, I found a 
few more little spots that needed work, but they were  quickly addressed and I 
could start applying color. The lid, wood blocks  and front and rear panels 
were far easier to prep.
 

 
Looking at it, even up close, it's hard to tell what's  under that paint.

If I had it to do over, I think I would  probably have applied veneer to 
the whole outside of the cabinet, but it  wasn't originally that way and so I 
didn't... But then it ended up looking very  non-stock when I completed it 
anyway...
 
If I ever run into anything like this cabinet again,  I'll probably follow 
my original plan and just build an entirely new cabinet out  of Baltic Birch 
plywood and MDF.
 
Frank
 
 
In a message dated 6/30/2012 12:47:18 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
tomdcour@amnh.org writes:

That  looks like it took alot of elbow grease Frank. Nothing like rubbing 
out  shellac with steel wool to get the blood pumping!! Great  work!