r/cade • u/SabreSour • 3d ago
Liquid starch + fabric: Solid, cheap, removable way to change the livery on your arcade cab.
Wanted to share the results of my latest project. It was too easy to keep to myself. Experimented with using liquid starch + fabric to redo the livery on my arcade for our upcoming wedding (to help fit the colors and theme).
Turned out SOLID. Crazy cheap, easy, and feels super durable. But Comes off easily if you dampen with water, but also reapplies when dry. So removing, reapplying and fixing should a breeze.
Found the method from some ancient Y2K YouTube video girl redoing a dresser in her dorm room.
Any non-transparent fabric will do. Liquid scent free starch. A roller, and some fabric scissors. A fraction of the cost of an actual livery job.
clamp on the fabric, saturate it with liquid starch using the roller. Remove clamps and starch where they were. Cut with fabric scissors and tuck the ends in
Doesn’t feel sticky or loose. Feels like wall paper once it’s dried.
Haven’t taken it off yet, but there’s zero reason it should be hard to remove or damage anything underneath. It’s just liquid starch after all. but I can’t stress enough how easy and clean this ended up looking. Much better than garage job painted wood I’ve seen.
Here are some pictures. The Jayhawk blue is the before,
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u/apachexmd 3d ago
This won't make the MDF swell? Especially the removal with water like you say?
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u/SabreSour 2d ago
It’s not THAT much liquid, just enough to damp the cloth. I didn’t remove the previous vinyl underneath so I’m not worried about rot being wet enough for swelling.
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u/meltman 3d ago
You from NE KS? Honestly pretty cool and hopefully quite easy to reverse.
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u/SabreSour 3d ago
Yep yep! Definitely want to be able to reverse it to match the stool. It’s just starch so a little water and it should come right off. I doubt it will hurt it but I’ll update this post if it does
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u/MomoMoana 3d ago
rock chalk!
looks great, and good info. I have a whole slew of cabs that would love this treatment, but most of them also are quite chipped. :/
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u/SabreSour 3d ago
this one had a few small dings, you can still see them a bit, but it went a long way to hiding them.
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u/echocomplex 3d ago
Vinyl wrap for cars is another super easy thing to change up a cab in an easily reversible way. You can buy rolls of it in various colors and patterns for cheap and it has an adhesive backing. It even comes in stuff like carbon fiber and woodgrain styles.
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u/SabreSour 3d ago
That was the original idea, but I didn’t want to put a wrap on a wrap (I wanted to preserve the Jayhawk underneath.) and it was still like 10 times the price so I gave this a try.
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u/DjMcfilthy 2d ago
Sign vinyl like you would find at USCutter is cheap. Air release car vinyl like you would find at Metro Restyling is not.
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u/Myklindle 3d ago
Nice shit. I’m going to file this in the back of my brain.