And so it begins

The project is running full steam ahead now. I received my joysticks, buttons, and keyboard encoder on Thursday and now have the joystick up and running with the encoder. As you can see in the picture, this is just the beginning.

I am still going through my games list to determine which games I want to be able to play. My control panel layout still has not been finalized. I think it will be a one player layout, but more on that later.

My friend, and arcade cabinet builder, Jeff (see his examples here) gave me a piece of MDF material that I am going to use to test some layouts.

Questions and concerns:
1) Which gauge wire do I use?
2) How do I connect the wires? Do I solder them? Do I use quick connects?
3) I need the appropriate drill bits.
4) I need a decent drill