Home made arcade style joystick - Fixing up the joystick box

Fixing the Joystick Box

For the joystick box, I used the simplest of all end joints to join the wood pieces together:

The exact reinforced butt joint that I used. The butt joints were secured together by 2 dowels and 2 screws and the reinforcement secured by glue. Not very nice-looking, but it does not matter to me as the whole joystick box will be covered with adhesive decorative paper in the end.

If you are planning to apply lacquer/varnish to the wood surface at the end, you may want to consider having nicer looking end joints like the miter joints and dovetail joints but they are much harder to make.

Remember to cut the reinforcement pieces to be shorter than the actual height of the joystick to allow the top and bottom cover of the box to fit in nicely.

Clockwise from top-left: joystick box with all butt joints done; cut reinforcement pieces; gluing on the reinforcement pieces to the box; the finished joystick box.

And don't forget the hole for the cable from the PCB to run out!

Bottom of the joystick box. You can see the hole for the wire to go through.

Putting on the top cover. A perfect fit! Time to put in the buttons and joystick!