Guitar Hero Face Plate - Rock out with your wood out
Status: Complete
This project was finished in one day and was pretty much an outcome of what happens when I have nothing to do at home.
8/12/2008 - Building the face plate
[The original face plate.]
The original face plates for Guitar Hero are so boring to look at. I thought about spray painting them a different color. I decided to take it a step further and make it from scratch out of some left over wood from my SNESp V2.
[Some curled maple that needs to be cut.]
The wood I was going to use was to thick so I resawed it on the table saw to 1/8" which was the thickness of the original face plate.
[Resawed and cut down maple.]
[Gluing]
I then glued the two panels together and stuck a heavy weight (in this case a box full of wrenches) on top of it to keep the two sides level while it dried.
[The two panels glued together.]
After several hours I removed the weight and found that the wood had joined nicely. I then put the face plate on the wood and traced it so I knew where to cut the holes and the outline.
[Starting to trace the face plate.]
[Face plate traced.]
[Rough cut.]
Using a scroll saw, I did a rough cut of the face plate on the wood. I did this so I could come back with a file and get it the exact right size.
[Filed down.]
After a couple hours of filing I reached the point where the wooden face plate could fit on the body of the controller. Then I passed it through my drum sander a couple times to smooth the surface. Then 3 coats of lacquer was applied to finish it off.
[Sanded face plate.]
[Waiting for lacquer to dry.]
[Comparison with the original face plate.]
Using double sided tape I attached the face plate onto the controller body.
