Packard Bell 17VT1

[Winky Dink]

Now that the electronic restoration is complete, I'm going to do a "show and tell" to share how I dealt with a couple of cabinet problems. The first issue is repair of the broken plastic mask. This is what I saw when I first unpacked the set.



The right side of the masked was cracked in a similar fashion. I didn't think about it again until I was reassembling the set. This is what worked for me.

The plastic is quite thin. The cracked segments could be apposed, but they were slightly warped and wouldn't stay in place passively. I used just enough tape on the back side to hold everything in place. Then I roughened the surface along the cracks with coarse sandpaper and covered the cracks with a liberal coat of epoxy cement.



When the epoxy was fully cured, I applied enough epoxy to the front surface to fill any gaps, then sanded it smooth.



When that epoxy was fully cured, I applied spot putty (an auto supply item) to fill any defects or scratches sand sanded it smooth.



Finally, with a coat of spray paint, there's no visible evidence that it was ever damaged.



In my next episode I'll show how I replaced the eight-inch-long horizontal hold control knob.