After almost a year of having my Pinbot, I've finally gotten around to starting on the restore process. It was to be next in line when purchased, but was bumped for a TZ and then my FH. If it wasn't for a local Pinsider looking for one to purchase it likely would have been put off even longer. The game is being redone with the agreement that he is going to purchase it after I'm done with it so I figured I'd put up the process for him and the rest to follow along with. I started teardown on May 6th and now on to the pics!

While the PF looks pretty bad, its mostly all there just lots of small cracks in the color. After disassembly I got to the touchup. I've found in my previous jobs, and also read somewhere too that if you clearcoat before touchup it locks in the artwork and it also gives a nice level canvas to work on which makes the T/U easier and come out much better without the paint wanting to bleed into other areas that aren't the same height. I've done this on my last game (FH) and it made it go alot faster and had better results too. I do however like to t/u the black before clearing, that way when you start you t/ups none of your paint actually comes in contact with each other as all the outlined areas are under the clear. So last weekend was spend touching up the black and then followed by clearing on Thurs May 18th. A few pics of the Black touchup.

Its really amazing how much of a difference just the black makes it look.

Heres a few pics of it after black t/u and first clearcoating. After this its been wet sanded with 600 grit on a block to level out the PF and then T/u can begin.

Holy crap that looks great! The buyer will be stoked when he sees this!

coasterguy said:

Holy crap that looks great! The buyer will be stoked when he sees this!

Yeah, and thats just with the black touched up, still alot of work left, but it will be nice when its all done!

Looks great! I have a project Pinbot that is #3 on the list for restore - although my pf isn't as bad. Great job!

Looks great!

I'm restoring one too. I'm applying a light grid decal tomorrow. Mine have a ton of wear around the grid area.

Nice work so far

Looks great so far. I really enjoy pinbot it is a solid game.

Looks great so far, Doot!

Nice work! Mine was in nearly exactly the same shape when I restored it. I have some useful tips on my Pin*bot resto page here;
http://passionforpinball.com/pinbot.htm

Cliffy said:

Nice work! Mine was in nearly exactly the same shape when I restored it. I have some useful tips on my Pin*bot resto page here;
http://passionforpinball.com/pinbot.htm

Amazing work, Cliffy!

Cliffy said:

Nice work! Mine was in nearly exactly the same shape when I restored it. I have some useful tips on my Pin*bot resto page here;
http://passionforpinball.com/pinbot.htm

Thanks, Cliffy! I'll have to check that out.

Just what you've got done so far looks great. Please post more pictures as you go along.

nice good...it looks gr8t

Cliffy said:

Nice work! Mine was in nearly exactly the same shape when I restored it. I have some useful tips on my Pin*bot resto page here;
http://passionforpinball.com/pinbot.htm

If been at your restore site a bunch of times during my bot restore.

Thanks for posting it!

When I saw those first pics with the cracking, I didn't think it was going to come out right. Looks surprisingly good after the clear.

My Pinbot plays like a champ but the satellite area down at the bottom is totally hosed, like a flipper was dragging. Previous owner did a marker touch up and Mylar. I'm going to pop for the CPR repro because I love the game so much.

Looking forward to more pics of your progress.

Ok this weekend I managed to get all the ornage and almost all of the Yellow done, just need to do the lower starburst with all the names for the yellow. (Not looking forward to that BTW) Heres a few pics to go along with the weekends work. The before grid pic, then orange after pics, then some yellows.

And now the Yellow's. The first two pics are half done to show the big difference and third is when all done.

Wow. Looks great! Look forward to retouching my old one after the I get the new CPR Pinbot playfield.

Mike

Looking really good Doot! One of the all time greats from my past, brings back some good memories.

amazing .....before and after....

More...more!

What do you use to apply? Working on my first PF touch up and getting really bad brush strokes that I have a problem sanding out.

spfxted said:

More...more!

Not much in the way of progress so far during the week, but just got news that we're going to have a four day weekend instead of a 3-day so I should get alot more done starting on Friday.

Methos said:

What do you use to apply? Working on my first PF touch up and getting really bad brush strokes that I have a problem sanding out.

I just use a regular paint brush, however you do need to water down the acrylic paints a bit to get it to flow better. Also if you plan on clearcoating over the t/u, it doesn't really matter as it will all level out with the clear.

What will you use to clear coat it with?

PINBELL said:

What will you use to clear coat it with?

Automotive clearcoat will be applied just like its done on all cars on the road today at my family's body shop.

Ok got a little bit done during this week working on it at night for a few hours here and there. The Yellow is now done and Green is also done. The lower portion of the PF (center drain)with the credits was a pain, but after trying a few things ended up being satisfactory to me, which is sometimes very difficult. LOL! The entire area was painted the yellow that I used for the grid which is close to what it should be, but after painting around the text found that it was way different due to the color change. So then I tried to t/u between the text, that turned out to not only take forever, but also look like a kindergartener wrote it. So my next idea was to try and color match that area as close as I could and just go around the text like I've done on previous games on similiar areas. While i wanted to try and keep all the yellow areas the same, this just wasn't really a possibility. Here are some pics of the progress of that.

Before picture

Half way t/u with regular Yellow - kinda hard to tell in the pic but the backround of the text doesn't match very well or blend in.

Touching up around text - see how bad this looks -haha definitely not going to cut it!
Touching up with new custom mixed yellow half way
Final result, which I'm finally happy with.

And finally a few green pics, 1st is a before pic, then a progress pic, followed by the final grid pic.

Looking great so far! It's intense, isn't it? The most fun for me (ha!) was painting the black around all those stars

A couple tips, if I may. I used good ol' Scotch tape for razor sharp and straight keyline masking. Also, in regards to the lettering in particular, get a magnified headgear set and use an Xacto knife to scrape away paint that goes over the lines and into the letters. If you do this within an hour it's easy and makes a clean line. Thats how I get my circles to look like circles and not wobbly eggs If you wait too long, however, the paint will tend to chip and flake and make a jagged line. Keep a large piece of common wax paper handy to rest your arm and hand on while doing all this to prevent smudges.

Get back to it!

I used circle stencils, thin brush or toothpick for the fine areas, thin blue painters tape. Looks pretty good so far!

Just buy the grid overlay!

Blackbeard said:

Just buy the grid overlay!

If it was just the grid that was bad I would have but I'm redoing the whole PF and that way it all color matches perfect. The grid area it actually some of the easiest areas.

Cliffy said:

Looking great so far! It's intense, isn't it? The most fun for me (ha!) was painting the black around all those stars

I guess your and my ideas of fun are different. haha, but actually it wasn't that bad as black is the easiest color to do since it doesn't have to cover perfect since it is a perfect match color-wise.

wow great resto, can't wait to see it cleared.

OK so I haven't gotten as much done with having the last few days off of work than expected, but a good amount of progress however. I got the light gray areas done and shatred doing some of the white spots. The white is the most drastically different before/after but doesn't really show it in the pics.

Before

One side done

Complete

And a few pics of the lower part of the grid (rocket)Gray & White.

Before gray & white

Gray all done, no White yet

Half White done

And the White on the Satellite Dish

The dish before

The Dish Half way done.

I Guess I forgot to take after both areas were done with the white so I'll have to take some for the next update

Nice work!

Awesome.
Makes you not wanna play it when it's done!

doot77: Have you seriously thought about doing playfields for a living? I mean not every playfield is reproduced, if you were to touch up an earthshaker, you could easily charge $500 for a job like this.

toyotaboy said:

doot77: Have you seriously thought about doing playfields for a living? I mean not every playfield is reproduced, if you were to touch up an earthshaker, you could easily charge $500 for a job like this.

I've thought that it would be a fun job to have for sure. The real issues i have are when the artwork is completely missing, that I still need some work on in my opinion. To me its just like when you were a kid and used to color in your colring books, you just have to stay between the lines. You do need a steady hand and the more t/ups you do you get better at it.

Ok a few more pics of the work on the Rocket and Dish Area.

Rocket w/Gray & White completed

Dish progress pic

Dish with White completed

So its been about a week since my last update and things are progressing nicely. I finally mixed a lt blue that I was happy with the color match and started with that. I completed the blue entirely and started to do some of the white here and there. Looking thru the pics I have it looks like I need to get some more after pics of a few areas. I had a little mishap with my SD card where it acidently took a ride in the washing machine, but after letting it dry out in the sun for a few hours it amazingly still had all the pics on it. So here's some more progress pics.

Half way done w/ blue on the grid (need an after pic still)

3 Bank before

3 Bank drop after white words t/u

3 Bank w/ blue & white completed

A few more blue pics and I also ended up toching up alot of the white inserts because after I started doing the white t/u it made them look so dull and yellowish. Kinda hard to tell in pics but alot better afterwards. I've also did alot of the lettering around the planets also, just a few more to do.

Lower LH side before

Lower LH side after

EB inserts LH done

EB inserts both done

OK so today marks the one month point since intial teardown begun with t/ups starting about a week or so after that. The PF is currently about 90+% done with just the dark gray areas left and a few small spots here and there. Here's a few progress pics from the last week's work.

A few before shots of Red area

Red Progress

After shots of Red areas

Up to date pics with major white aresa done and only dk gray left to t/up.

awesome work, thanks for all the photos!