Another 30 days until I'm licensed as a dentist. Brenna98 has been persistent at trying to get me back into this and has my curiosity peaked. The risky part of the project is to make sure there is enough interest from people to make it worth while. I'm excited to watch this thread because I agree silk screening is crucial to get things right. I've got artwork files for a few Bally games already so making the screens wouldn't be an issue.

So far so good with the interest levels. I'm very happy Brenna98 called me so we could figure out how to restore these great games. I'm going to be doing some research over the next few weeks to see if I can source the games listed above so I can get two things from them. First and most importantly I need to get quality artwork so I can make accurate silk screens for them and color match the inks and base coat. Second, I want to see just how many of the aprons are identical in size and form. If anyone can say with 100% certainty that they know say Fathom and Centaur are identical please let me know. Each and every unique apron will need a custom silk screening jig to hold the apron stable between prints.

In order for this to be time and cost effective it would be very helpful to do games in batches. It's just about as much work to strip, powdercoat, mix inks, setup silk screens, register silk screens, clean silk screens (time intensive) to do 20 games as it is to do 1 game. All that said I hope we can get the interest because we could make some really beautiful restored aprons to go with the restored cabinets, CPR playfields, and plastics, etc... For too long we have been stuck with scratched, dented, flaking paint on our aprons and only left with decals that do their best, but don't cut the muster of us crazy pinball perfectionists.

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It would be for the apron and shooter. It's very unlikely that the new v. old basecoat and inks would match 100% if put side by side due to yellowing and fading over the years.

That's why I reproduced the aprons for HS and TOTAN so I could deliver I perfect apron with no dings, dents, frays, etc... If it turns out that the aprons are identical between the majority of Bally games this is a real possibility. If they differ in small ways it's not cost feasible to make 5-10 a game since the tooling alone can cost thousands of dollars.

Another added benefit of making new aprons is I could increase the thickness to an 18 gauge steel which would really reduce flexibility, dents, and bends in the future. They would still be plug and play with the existing hardware.

For those keeping count on interest
8 Ball Deluxe - 5
Air Aces - 1
Black Knight - 1
Centaur - 3
Embryon - 1
Fathom - 5
Fireball II - 1
Flash Gordon - 2
Future Spa - 1
Hang Glider - 1
Mata Hari - 1
Medusa - 2
Paragon - 6
Skateball - 1
Viking - 1
Zenon - 1

Probably similar to what High Speed and TOTAN were, in the $100-150 range depending on the amount of colors, number of units made, complexity of the apron, and licensing rights if they are made from scratch.

It's not as simple as it sounds. The aprons are silk screened with individual colors. In order to do it properly each color needs to be registered against the last. As mentioned before it takes about as much time and effort to do one apron as it does to do 10+ due to the setup times. Doing one at a time is an option, but the labor it takes would make the price increase dramatically unless they could be done in batches.

eg. Merf's Pins has a wish list of games. When 10 or more orders are reached everyone sends in that specific game and a notice is put out for anyone else interested to get it in by a cutoff time. The owner would need to know it may take one month turn around from the time they shipped the apron out from the time they receive it back. If the apron is only being restored any heavy scratches, dents, may remain under the powdercoat since it cannot be bondoed over. That said if many aprons are the same we may have extras from other games we could strip and send back in cases of severely damaged aprons received.

Yes, chances are Flash Gordon will be the first game we start with for apron restorations.

Once I hit a high enough interest number I will start with pre-orders on Funhouse.

Brenna98 and I will be posting pictures of our screens and restored aprons over the next few weeks. The film positives are finished and I will be exposing the screens later this week.