you welcome everybody to my latest video so for this video I thought I'd show you guys how to remove and install tea molding for your arcade cabinet now one of the reasons why I'm making this video is because well first I'm actually going to do this process for a project that I'm working on and you may have seen my previous video the project is right there you might not be able to make it out too well but it's a capcom big blue cabinet so I'm going to be replacing the tea molding on that but the reason why I'm actually making a video is because I had probably over the last month or so two people message me and inquire about how do we move tea molding and how to install it and I told them you know it wasn't a big strenuous process at all but it gives me something to do so I'm going to make the video now the first thing is here as you can see I got three different colors of tea molding they come in a variety of colors orange black green blue red chrome white tan and I'm sure there's a limit of two what color you can get it's mostly just basic colors but anyways you do have a pretty big variety at least for your cabinet now here's a one thing usually the way it works is the Mortie molding you buy the cheaper you can purchase it by the foot most places will sell it only in 20-foot rolls and I'll come in something like this just rolled up usually it's a 20 foot minimum purchase and then after that some places will sell you additional tea molding by the foot or every five feet every 10 feet and again usually the more you purchase the cheaper you can get it you you will pay between I'd say 25 cents a foot to up to $2 a foot up to the first 20 feet and what I mean by that well basically shop around because if you just go and type T molding in your search browser and you go with one of the first things that come up you're going to be paying about $2 a foot and it's not even for our Cade stuff there is t molding for counters countertops I guess maybe even certain appliances but it's just weird how many applications for t molding so when you're searching around look for t molding arcade I personally like to get my t molding from twisted quarter calm I think they have a pretty good price and I think I don't know what was it fifteen dollars for twenty feet maybe no I think was like seven dollars for the first twenty feet so if you break that down it's pretty cheap by the foot so anyways you got three different colors here now t molding if you can just focus in right there you can see that's pretty much all it is and you see it's got like an arch and it's got this a leg if you want to call it with these grooves so this is what T molding looks like there you go that should focus in is what T molding looks like you know on its side now the reason for t molding is it basically gives you arcade cabinet a smooth look because without the T molding you're just going to get like the flatness of the board so T molding you know got a nice curvature going on and adds a nice smooth look so let's go ahead and I'll show you how to remove t molding okay so here we are next to my cabinet and for the most part tea molding is going to be on the outside of the cabinet on the edges you can see it goes all the way through here and in some cases tea molding will also be on your control panel and if you can focus in we got tea molding all around here on the top we got it on the bottom wrapping all the way around here's another angle you see we've got tea molding down here so there's quite a few places where tea molding is applied on your arcade cabinet now you may be asking how much tea molding you need for your arcade well depending on the cabinet will depend on how much you need and just to be safe always order at least you know an extra few feet so if you think you need 20 feet order 22 feet or 25 feet the reason is because maybe the ends aren't good or maybe you mess up on some place so having a few extra feet helps out and of course how do you know well just get a tape measure and quickly measure you wherever the tea molding is going doesn't have to be perfect and once you get your measurement round it up and add a few extra feet now how do you get tea molding off well first of all usually the tea molding will start and stop either somewhere on the back of the cabinet or down below the reason for that is if it was put it started and stopped in the front of the cabinet where it's visible it looks kind of ugly so you know you put it in the back where no one can see it back in the days these were placed against the wall no one would really ever see the back of the cabinet and no one's going to look below the cabinet so you just look in this particular cabinet I cannot find where it stopped where it stops and starts so they either hit it really well or maybe it's just really really tucked tight under the bottom either way not a big deal and I'll show you what I do and you'll need an exacto knife or some type of a sharp object okay so if you can't find where your tea molding starts and stops basically just go to the back here and this is what I do is go to the back pick someplace get yourself an exacto knife or some other type of knife and you can just lightly cut away at the tea molding it's not going to you know damage your cabinet nothing's bad is really going to happen the only thing is you want to be real careful that if you do if you do proceed with this process you don't cut so hard as to then dig into the wall of the cabinet now if you do it's not the end of the world because once again you're on the back so just so I could do this accurately I'll stop right here cut away and then we'll start up the camera again okay here we are and what I did is basically starting from the other side I just made a nice cut through the tea molding on both sides lifted it up and then I cut this part right here where is it right there just made a nice little slit and then what happens next is you just pull the tea molding straight out let me go ahead and put away my knife here so I don't stab myself but here's the tea molding and the way you take it off is you just pull on up and that's it comes off nice and easy now here's one thing some of the older cabinets like you know you might have a Miss pac-man Galaga from my experience when those came from the factory where the tea mouldings stopped and started they would put glue or staples so be prepared for that however for the most part you're not gonna have to deal with glue or staples there's just absolutely no need and I've come across you know dozens and dozens and dozens of cabinets through this hobby that I've have in my collection I've sold I've refurbished and with the exception of a pacman and a Miss pac-man I've never had to deal with glue or staples so again once you make your cut just pull up and I'll come out nice and easy and there you go now of course you'll when you have a cabinet with a control panel like this you know you'll have to open up the control panel to get the rest of it and so forth let's go take a look at my aliens cabinet get around my workout stuff here this one I really didn't have to mess with the control panel because the tea molding was only on the edges of the side that didn't sound right anyways you get the point this one I do have more places with tea molding so I have to take care of that basically there you go now once you get all your tea molding removed you can see right here here's the groove that you're going to find you don't want to automatically start putting in new tea molding you'll want to clean it up you want to make sure maybe even take a vacuum or a shopback and vacuum all the way around your tea molding edge the reason is you want to make sure there's nothing stuck inside the grooves because if there is your tea molding is not going to sit properly so remove all your tea molding take a vacuum take a shop vac if you don't have those then at the very least just dust it off you want to make sure it's nice and clean so let me go ahead and do that and then we'll start with the next segment okay here we are I got the tea molding lined up and one thing I would recommend is to buy a rubber mallet if you don't have one or if all you have is a regular hammer then take your hammer wrap a towel around it and you can use you know that you don't want to use a normal hard faced hammer or mallet because if you do when you tap this in it's going to leave DET marks in the tea molding and that's just not going to look good but the regular rubber mallet you just tap it in now if you just use your fingers or your hands to push it in it's not going to go in deep all the way and you can see that the grooves the groove that's on your cabinet well that's where see if you can focus in that's where this leg goes in get a better angle over here there we go you can see how the tea molding just goes in right that right there in the slot and then you push it down now you might be asking yourself well you know I got the right size tea molding and speaking of size how do you know which size you need well just take a tape measure and measure the outside diameter or you know I'll tell you what you need whether it's a one-inch 3/4 there's some other sizes I don't know off the top of my head but yeah anyways you might be asking yourself well I got the right size I'm putting it I'm putting the tea molding in the slot and it's just popping up it's not sticky well if that happens then what you do is take some masking tape I don't have any on me right now but you'll take some masking tape and just put it on this leg right here me let me get a small piece and I'll show you you okay so what you want to do is that the slot is too big and your tea molding is popping out just get your tea molding and I found masking tape works best you might try electrical tape and what you want to do is place it right on that leg down there and just lightly press it in and what that does see if you'll focus in but basically what it does is it widens the leg and it makes it more adaptable to the slot that's you know wider than it should be now if one one slit of a masking tape or electrical tape doesn't work and it's still popping out go ahead and put another I've had that problem before and basically all you're doing is just making um making the leg right there wider so it will stick in then I guess if all else fails you can use glue or staples but you know I highly would go against doing that besides what if little road you want to change a tea molding again so that's all you have to do now back to an installation okay now when you come to a curved area area on your cabinet you can't just you know install a tea molding over it like you would a flat surface because if you do you can see the tea molding starts to bend and it almost starts to buckle and what's going to happen is it's gonna pop out so what you have to do is make some slits right here now as you can see I didn't cut away too much I just basically made a v cut out and when you go over depends on how how much of a radius you got going on here and I'll depend on how many cuts you have to make I might actually make just another small one right over here but that will allow me to install a tea molding and will actually stick to the curve now I got this I got the tea molding installed fully on the back all the way on the top over both curves and I'm starting on the front now one thing you want to make sure is of course the and this goes with a okay and got the tea molding installed all the way on the back on the top over both curves and I'm starting on the front now but what I'm about to tell you goes back to the shop vacuuming of your cabinet if you have even just a little piece of wood or you know maybe even a piece of the tea molding that you cut off so that you can install properly on these curves right here if any of that is stuck on the top and you pound the tea molding in its gonna leave a little bump and it's actually going to be visible I got one right here I can feel it think of it almost like a pimple I guess you can feel this bump right here and that's because I guess the little piece of tea molding that I cut away from here fell and it got caught between the new tea molding and the cabinet now because it's on the back and no one's gonna see I really don't care I'm just gonna leave it but from the front yeah be even more careful and if it was on the front then I would take it off and remove it so got we're going down here and you can see we got another curve but this time it's curving towards the inside now when that happens all you do is just you can see right there just put a slit and that's it you don't need to cut away anything just a simple slit will do because again if you didn't cut away you try to install this it's going to pop out but the slit actually allows the tea molding to stay in there and there's less pressure for it to pop out so there you go and I'll install all the way down here make a little few cuts right here for this curve down here and you know the whole shebang but there we go so I'll complete this side I'll do the other side and then I'll do my control panel which is over there and I'll show the finished product okay here we are and you can see I got the tea molding all done I decided to go with black on the edges and orange for the control panel you can also see I've done a little bit more work on the control panel itself that'll get talked about in another video but yeah there we are so tea molding is not really that difficult to install so until next time that's it man game over man game over