I finally completed my 14 month restoration project of a 1964 Williams River Boat. Many people I would like to thank for their assistance and help with this restoration.

Aahgo - a by chance conversation with Glen at MGC 2016 lead me to someone he knew who had a second RB in need of a major restoration. Thanks a ton Glen, you might have heard that I also bought his Post Time two weeks ago.
Boilerman- for supplying me with replacement post.
Belairjoe- helping me with the cabinet repaint and and extremely helpful restoration tips.
Ron Woodard -former Pinball Plating and More- Ron did fantastic work on all of the plating work I had done.
Candyman- a good Pinsider friend for his advice and helpful knowledge
Odin- for talking up this game so much, it made me want one
Oh, and of course Mr. Steve Young. No restoration like this can be done without him.

I am going to take my time with this thread, and hopefully have it completed in about one week.

Let's start with the ugly.

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The playfield was extremely rough, but after the first cleaning, it started to look pretty good.

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I could have stop here after the ME and alcohol, but as you can see in the other pictures, the wood was worn down to bare and had divots.

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I made the decision to sand out all of the bare wood and apply clear shellac. This obviously caused these parts of the playfield to be lower than the rest of the playfield. I'll explain later how I fixed this.

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And now for some of the insanity I brought into this restoration. I sanded down the bottom board and coated in clear shellac. Took apart the score motor and mother mag it.

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I should have mentioned this at the top, I needed to slow down on my collection acquiring. So I decided to take on this project machine, not rush myself, and take my time to enjoy the restoration process. I wanted to give this machine the full attention it deserved and do my best job possible to bring it back to its full glory.

I simply taped off all around the parts I was sanding with blue tape. Spent about 3 hours taping it off. Depending on the sections, I started with 400-800 grit paper and worked my way to 1000, 1500, then 2000. Took a lot days and time to get results I was satisfied with. Going slow and careful is the only secret to not destroying the other PF colors. The Williams logo was probably the hardest, and as you mentioned, getting that UV stain out took a lot out of the PF. The logo was more like an raised embossed emblem when I was done.

After a few questions with Vid, I decided on the Zinsser clear shellac. The clear brought out the true natural color of the wood. The amber made it too dark.
Don't be fooled by the pictures, the cabinet was in very bad shape. Other than the two sides, the rest of the cabinet was rotted away. I peeled away about half of the plywood layers on the back end and replaced it with bondo.

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Here's a peak at how the flipper section turned out. These are the original metal flippers. I stripped and repainted them.

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How I fixed my lower sanded out portions of the playfield. I have read numerous post here on Pinside about using 2pac or poly acrylic to level out sunken inserts. I do not do enough restoration's nor did I have any plans of clear coating this playfield, so I went the poly acrylic way. Using an eye dropper, I applied the PA into the lowered portions very carefully. I waited 24 hours until I applied a second coat if needed. This method worked well for me all around except the flipper part were I ended up with severe orange peeling. I ended up having to wet sand this part out and do it over. Came out nice the second time around.

I spent so many hours, days and months working on the playfield touch ups, that I made the decision to put Mylar on the whole lower portion of the playfield. I am not a fan of Mylar playfields, but in this case I saw it as the best choice to preserve the PF. I kept the top half original. Any portions that I applied poly acrylic to were cover in Mylar to elevate any concerns of the PA wearing away. Pops, rollovers, and stand up targets.

I sent the lockdown bar to Ron Woodard (pinball plating and more). I had Ron polish the bar and chrome the end caps.

Before

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After

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Ron charged me $70 for everything you see, plus shipping both ways, final cost was about $95.

I have sanded down my other lockdown bars myself down to 2500. My results were nowhere near what Ron did. This bar was so scratched up, I did not want to even try. Plus, he charged me only $20 to do the bar, so I would say that was money well spent. You and I both know how long it takes to do it ourselves.

The cabinet was a lot of work. The backend was mostly rotted out and the front grain was raised substantially. I removed most of the layers in the back and used bondo to fix it up. The front I sanded down and coated with 5 applications of Kilz original. The rest of the cabinet got three coats with a sanding between coats. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of the cabinet before I painted it.

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My friend Belairjoe help me with the painting. We had a very difficult time trying to duplicate the flecking on the cabinet. We tried three different types of silver paint for the flecking. The consistency of all the paints was very thin and difficult to apply with the brush flicking method. So I ended up going with the Krylon marbelizing spray. Did not quite match original flecking and came out more like a webbing, but we were very satisfied with the results.

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The cabinet after stenciling.

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Overspray- believe it or not, the original cabinet had zero overspray. So we were careful to keep it that way. This machine must have caught a Williams employee on a good day back in '64. We noticed that the left red trapezoid on the head was a little off, but after looking at original pictures of the head before I made the stencil's, we noticed that was how it was, and that's why my stencil was off. So we left it.

Flipper buttons polished up.

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Everything under the playfield was covered in some type of corrosion. I decided replacing every light socket was the best choice to do.

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Evaporust is my new best friend. Followed up with mothers mag. Slingshots and rollovers, before/ after.

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Pop bumper rebuilds.

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Backboard.

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The rest of the chromed parts. I chromed the playfield lockdown plates along with the lockdown levers. Then I chromed the back bar along with the two bars beneath. I was not expecting the cabaret lights to light up the middle top apron plate so much, so I will be sending that out next for plating.

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Some additional pic's before the final reveal.

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And, Finally!

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Thank you to all for your kind words. My friend and I struggled for a month with the silver speckling. He has done a few machines with speckling with great results, but we learned dealing with silver paint was a different animal. I know the slight webbing is not original, but it still does make the machine look great. The interior webbing I did on the top apron and side rails does actually match the original webbing on the bottom apron.

I believe I explained above how I dealt with my sanded down parts. I did not use Mylar to level out the parts, but poly acrylic. Then covered with Mylar.

I truly love the play of this game. A lot of skill is involved in keeping the ball in play. A little nudge here and there can keep a ball alive for a good time. My brother in law was the first person to play this game with me, and he could not believe how long I kept the ball bouncing around the top bumpers.

I primed everything with oil based Kilz in one gallon can. I just used normal satin white latex paint on the backboard, I also had to rebuild all of the outer edges. A friend of mine sprayed the cabinet base white coat professionally. I not exactly sure what he used.

I took my time restoring the machine, (18 months). I did not want to have the pressure of updating a thread and answer questions as I went along, and yes I made a lot of decision changes as I went along.

Double post.