Help! casters/MDF cab bump-ouch!

[leelove]

Ok, the silly boy I am (with an increasingly weak back) i stuck 4 good casters on the bottom of my ashdowm mag410 cab. Its been fine for gigs n gigs but then friday Im bumping it outta the venue and it hits a drain cover and one of the casters comes clean off. I can tell that the MDF where its was screwed in is now wrecked (although not all the way through)....
What should I do? Was thinking about gettin a new dr bass neo can anyway but quite like this cab despite the por press it sometimes gets-should I now mount some decent ply on the bottom (as i probably should have done in the first place) and get the casters back on?
Cheers lads....

 

[wkbryan]

I had a similar experience many years ago when in college. I took it to a friends father who repaired it and I never, ever had any more problems and it suffered through a lot of use.
He put a steel plate on the inside and outside (sandwiching the bottom of the cabinet) and then put bolts through the whole shootin' match with the lock washers and nuts on the inside. It added just a few pounds but it worked great and looked good.

All things considered it wasn't really that difficult to do. We used the same castors.

 

[chadds]

Repair it and get a dolly/cart.
If not on one of those really dry days you'll hit a bump and sawdust will come pouring out.

 

[Bryan316]

Suprisingly, wide strips of velcro are quite strong. If your cab is fabric-covered, you can build a plywood and caster dolly, staple 2" wide velcro underneath the dolly, and wrap them up the sides of the bottom of the cab.

It holds hella-strong. Moreso than you'd first believe.

 

[leelove]

Thanks lads, I think Ill just get the other casters off n go for the dolly idea yeah. What should i do to repair the busted/damaged corner...standard wood filler? Im really not too good at this stuff! Cheers again.........

 

[wkbryan]

I would repair with an epoxy type wood filler. They require mixing but usually dry fast, are strong, and offer good weather resistance. Minwax High Performance wood filler is a brand I like but have used J.B. Weld and even plain epoxy glue with good results on similar projects. One things to consider though is that you have to have an excellant bond to the old material to get excellant results. I think I would dirve some small nails or drive some small screws into the area to be repaired and leave the heads exposed a little bit, but still below the level of the undamaged surface. That will help give the repair a lot of strength.

Good Luck.