That cabinet is going to be awesome-

I assume the second image is the computer file for the graphic? Colors just look too saturated and quite different from the cabinet so I am assuming its not from a camera (and the jet is flying the wrong way). It looks like you have it looking good. What are you going to cut this on? You must have access to commerical equipment because any cutter that could do that wide of a graphic is going to be WAY beyond any recoverable cost for someone working on pinball machines! I wish I had access to your toys!

Looking good.

In regards to the question-

I am using the GerberMask stencil material and cutting it on a Silhouette Cameo. The Cameo has a very very fine blade mounted to a 2d plotting arm, so the computer controls it (you can set blade depth on the knife manually) and you specify the speed to the plotter arm (and the blade) as well as the down force it applies (thus enabling you to VERY precisely cut the stencil material completely through without touching the backing paper).

I was trying to use FRISKET as a stencil material and cutting that on the Silhouette. I gave up for two reasons,

The MAIN reason I bailed out was that in attempting to float the frisket I discovered that the adhesive is water soluble. Granted, I never tested it with a commercial float product (but they are at least mostly water any ways) so perhaps I could overcome this but it scarred me- all the glue transfered to the play field and I had to spend a while with Glue Gone and sand paper etc to pull it up.

The second reason was, its too flexible and easy to stretch, weeding it is MUCH more difficult than weeding the GerberMask, and the GerberMask backing comes off MUCH easier making it much less likely that you would wreck the stencil after having weeded it.

This is NOT a knock on Frisket. I had NO CLUE what the hell to DO, only a vision of what I wanted to do... FRIKET was basically never intended to function the way I was trying to use it. I learned... moved on... and indeed materials designed for the job work MUCH better than duct tape and spit.

Huh- I would have assumed that those larger cutters were also really precise... shows what I know. Maybe that is why the auto graphic guy I have met has a cutter thats only maybe 18 inches wide but that is according to what he said, incredibly accurate. Thus far I have ZERO complaints about the Silhouette, its been invaluable and amazing considering that I got the entire package for less than 250 bucks and I have been using the crap out of it.

Here is a short update and a question...

I have spent the last few weekends when I can grab an hour or two carefully working out color matches and making large batches of color matched paint for the Blue, Orange, Yellow, and White. This ended up being a much longer task than I had accounted for in my head. But, I can now safely say that I have basically perfect matches for the Blue, Yellow, and Orange and have managed to make up enough of each to easily (I hope to god) finish the entire play field.

I also decided that I needed to deal with the large areas of missing paint chips etc that were creating voids in the surface. So- I did something I was very nervous about attempting, but that worked out exceedingly well.

I mixed up small batches of Bondo and using a small rubber squeege (for stencil application) I filled the voids across large areas of the play field by basically using the squeege to run the bondo across much of the lower 1/3 of the play field. This coated much of the graphics with a pink sheen and it looked TERRIBLE.. .but remember I had sprayed a coat of clear first.

I then sanded it with 320 grit sand paper until I had removed all the bondo from the top and was left with a bondo fill in all the voids and a near perfect surface-

So- I now have a very level surface but with bondo filling in a whole lot of small defects and a few larger areas. My plan (and I am forcing myself to do this cause I really want to spray color first)-=

Spray 2 coats of clear and sand with 320 - HARD- to bring this to near perfect level-THEN spray blue, yellow, and Orange, then another coat of clear and finish the bonus with the white and finally the black lines to define everything. I feel like I have it very good now (in terms of surface) and I better lock the bondo DOWN with clear. My concern is that if I try to stencil over the bondo fills its going to lift out when I peel... and then I am FUBAR cause I do not have enough clear left to bondo and sand again... so I am going to LOCK this in NOW...

My question is-

WHAT do I need to do and in what order to guarantee that I can spray multiple colors using multiple stencils such that one stencil does not PEEL off a prior color! When I had tried this a few times using a 600 grit sanded clear coat as a base and a heat gun to cure (and I was using a rapid tac to float) I was peeling up prior coats (not all of it, but enough to be NOT GOOD).

My plan is-

Sand the clear with 220 grit to give the paint something to GRAB. (I had been using 600 grit)
STOP using rapid Tac (see below)
Float with water lightly sprayed onto the stencil adhesive
USE a paper transfer paper so it SOAKS up the float and allows rapid dry
SPRAY the paper with RAPID TAC to help RELEASE the adhesive between the transfer paper and the stencil
Spray colors and almost IMMEDIATELY peel the stencil (e.g. maybe use a heat gun to get it to barely tack dry but NO more)
THEN dry color with a heat gun

PRAY- sacrifice a beer to the beer gods... and repeat with the next color.

When I dry the paint is it OK to warm the surface or should I be doing this on a very low setting basically just blowing warm air (not hot)? Does it matter? I could see how you might set the very top layer first and somehow F-up the drying if you went to hot (you can crack a thick coat this way)

I discovered that I can wet a rag with RapidTac and use it to WIPE up dry acrylic from the clear EASILY... so no more rapid Tac- I am going to try water with a tiny amount of dish detergent (1 drop in a spray bottle). This was a tip from a sign shop but I do not think ANYONE there is stenciling over acrylic... I suspect that the water and a rag would also pull it up, but not as easily... rapid tac has some sorta detergents in it and its NOT good over acrylic.

ANY ideas to Help me finish this without having to re do s$!t all the time?

Ok- This took unbelievably LONG-

But- I have a perfect color match for the orange, yellow, and blue, and white- black was easy

Here is a photo of a region of the game with all three colors (Yellow, blue, orange) where I have painted a thick drop of the color match over the solid color region. The game has so many different versions of every color, in terms of if you match a color in one small region and then go somewhere else its not quite the same... for instance, the yellow above the #9 has a large L shaped brush line I laid down which is almost invisible, whereas 2 inches away you can clearly see the new color because that region is a little darker from fade.. I have blue arrows pointing to the new color in every region.

Will post a pic of same region after the bondo- this is before.

The blue is a little darker than the region I painted over, but if I go to a less faded part of the play field its a perfect match, so I basically spent many hours finding a close color and then selecting the brightest part of the old paint to match it to, since I will be redoing much of the play field, this made the most sense. But seriously, mixing up 10 drops of color is much easier than making 3+ ozs... no way did I have the patience to count 1000 drops of X and add 130 of Y and 50 of Z etc etc... I got it close and then chased the big batch until I had it right. Probably a better way using a syringe etc, and next time I will be using a syringe method to get volumes to mix proportionally, but this worked and I am now done and once I get a coat of clear on, it should go fast now.

Stencil cutting, design, weeding, etc etc is all now a nice easy work flow for me... but the learning curve SUCKED.

You will notice that after my first disaster with the clear colors as a match, I stripped every bit of pain that I had applied off the play field- so its back to its ugly self with no stupid ass horrible color match but for the now correct ones. I admit, I needed a few days to get excited about this after FUBAR-ing my first attempt.. but do and learn- do and learn... I must repeat this mantra else I give up.

ColorMatch.jpg

Here is the bonus region after being Bondo filled and sanded... Clear coat next then 320 grit sand, and stencil away... Absolutely no going back now, its no longer a players game with pink Bondo all over the place.

The surface is actually very good, not perfect but 95% improved and will be far better to work with for stencils and to avoid bleeding of the paint under the stencil. This weekend should be awesome. I really want to see this done- Not much else I can do in terms of optimizing, prepare, and trial and error... it should finish and I really hope it looks good.

BONDO.jpg

I know it looks TRASHED- but thats WHY I did this entire process in the first place! You will notice that 99% of the seriously hammered parts are within the black borders of the bonus region, which will be 100% entirely repainted this weekend (I hope I get the time)-

And yes- I love that saying- the Enemy of good is Better- absolutely true, but its also really easy to bail out if your version of good is fungible. My version of good is close enough to original that either you cannot tell or you would have to spend more than a passing glance to figure out that it was redone. That said, there is not much more I can do at this point so whatever happens happens and I guess I move on and play it after I finish it up. But the quality of the stencils is very promising.

I am using the absolutely standard Bondo - the filler widely used in high school body shops and perhaps even the pros. Brian Kelly also suggests using it to fill cabinet wood chips etc and its something I have been using for years in cabinet making and carpentry. If you have never used it before just beware it sets up within literally 2-3 minutes of mixing- MAX. So mix in very small batches- use it FAST and you can sand in something like 20 mins if its thin.

Not to be stupid here- but you HAVE to clear coat the play field before you do this, cause your going to end up with the entire thing coated with a thin sheen of PINK bond... which must be sanded off until your left with bondo only in the voids and the clear coat exposed again everywhere else. This looked absolutely stupid bad before I sanded it... like you had ruined the play field- so be ready for that- But- it really did fill most all of the voids and its now a very nice surface.

I too wondered about this-But if you think about it, in panel repair in the auto shop you typically run the bondo past the void and feather it to a zero depth by sanding. If that essentially zero depth feathered edge had the propensity to lift off the metal surface then absolutely zero people would be using bondo for this. It would destroy any repair ever made in short order.

That, and the fact that the clear coat will end up being relatively thick combined with the fact that the center of the play field sees very little "bounce" in terms of the ball actually going up in the air and landing hard- I doubt it will be an issue. But you have a valid concern that I had thought through and decided it was worth what I decided was minimal risk.

That combined with there being basically no obviously better solution made the decision easy. I could have filled with clear but its just a crap ton of work to take the 99% of the play field area that is actually level- down far enough to actually level it by spraying the whole thing to fill the voids, and using an eye dropper to deal with what was a few hundred small voids would have been equally terrible. I bet this is fine, but I am not going to be hitting it with a small hammer to test it, game play will tell and that's going to be a good long while.

Well... Bondo is not coming off now...

Hit the entire play field with fairly heavy 2x coat of clear (DuPont 2 part- Chroma Clear).

Let me say, the first coat of clear on this looked ridiculous- and after the bondo it still looked like complete crap- amazing how incredibly bad this play field was- filled with hundreds of defects BUT....

I let it cure for about 5 days and have been at it with good quality 320 grit sand paper and am about 1/2 way done- by hand. Its not a huge amount of work but if you can get this far without sweating a little bit your either used to doing this a lot or your working slow! The play field is looking very close to level. There are a few remaining inserts that are low and a few spots here and there that have not quite filled in but I am now confident this is going to be a sheet of glass when its done.

Although its killing me.. .I need to delay painting the stencils just a little more to spot fill the clear to just finish it and bring it to perfect level across the board before painting- kinda in the groove here and its close... so if I spot fill now I can sand to level without worrying about paint...

I kinda switched work modes, I had been really trying to take every free minute and work on this with learning the stencils etc etc but now have settled in and am happy to just get at it now and again when I can and take my time. This is the way to go!

2ndClear_sanding.jpg

Quick update- no photos yet.. but coming.

I sanded the playfield down to near dead flat and decided that it was not worth bringing the clear to dead flat now, just too much dinking around to set up the gun, clear the garage etc when I could spend the same time spraying with the air brush and put the clear over the top of the redone bonus region!

So- I have the blue, yellow, and orange sprayed, and its looking sweet. White and black to finish this off in a few days. Quick question-

Does anyone have a trick to keeping the acrylic from drying so fast, I am having small issues with the paint drying on the top of the stencil prior to me finishing off the bottom and seeing just tiny rips when I peel. I wonder- if I spray the entire thing really fast just to wet the surface, would this then assist me in releasing the stencil? I want it perfect and its so very very close... I am even thinking of spraying and peeling kinda as I go but do not want to test yet another itteration of technique at the last step- This is really coming together!

Pics this weekend- of what should be completed bonus region- FINALLY

Ok.. I am trying hard to decide if I think this came out good or if its slightly fubar and needing to be redone again-

But-

I got the entire bonus region sprayed, I do need to do one last orange segment- but here is the progress and the final pics.

I think that the lettering came out as good or better than I could have hoped. Even the THOUSAND's wording came out great and that is a pretty small font to have cut and reproduced by hand! My complaint, and I am not entirely certain why this happened, but here is my complaint and why I think it occurred-

The black lines are feathery- black paint ran under the edges of the stencil- its bad enough that there is no way I accept this as a final job, but I *THINK* that I can actually fix this with a brush pretty easily. The black should be raised up a little bit compared to the white, so I think I can just lay a white brush up against it and feather over all the small black hair lines running into the white.

I *THINK* the reason this happened, is that I did not let the stencil adequately dry after floating and repositioning the black final stencil, so the little bits of water under there served to wick paint, but also to dilute it so again I think I can fix this.

What would I do differently if I start over? Clear coat over the blue, yellow, orange and white, THEN do the black.
Remember EVERY SINGLE bit of that entire bonus region has been repainted- completely. I do have touch up here and there where there were subtle registration errors. But here ya go- pics to prove that I still have work to do... but I think its come a long way.

I do not consider this good enough, but I am better with a brush (at least my learning curve is past) and feel like I might be able to fix this to near perfect. If not, I guess I just cut new stencils and armed with my experience - do it right on last time.

Note that the blue region up top peeled when pulling one of the stencils- so that also needs to be retouched but thats trivial. Unsure what to think- it just looks kinda crappy- but I wan to see how easy it is to float the lines with white to bring it to razor sharp before I just scrub off all this work.

Here is the blue stencil on and paintedBlueStencil_Paint.JPG

Now the yellow on and paintedYellow_Painted.JPG

Final solid colors before I did the whiteSolidsDONE_Stencil.JPG

Play field with blue, yellow, and small orange segment and now painted white everywhere that white or black will go... with the black stencil aligned before paintingBlack_Stenicl_onPF.JPG

Final somewhat crappy but I hope perhaps fixable result- Just needed to wait over night for the stencil to dry out, but was worried it would bond too tight and peel up too much paint so I hit it with paint, and you can see the result- Oh well.... more work to do, but this validates my approach and I think you can see that IF I did this again, it would probably come out perfect. So tempted to scrub it off and do it again-

FINAL_1stGerber.JPG

I think its coming off... to easy to redo- I hate the thought of weeding yet another group of stencils, but I have an entire roll of the crap and its not going to be used for much else, so I guess I will take this all off, start over, and perhaps work on a few other things for now to take a small break- The potential for this to be perfect is now looking real- so might as well take it all the way and do it right. At least I have great color matches, and now know that the second to the final step needs to be another coat of clear. Geeze- talk about a long process. Should be fun to play this sucker whenever that happens- thats for sure-

Oh- The entire play field white will be repainted to match the white in the graphic I created. That white matches the very brightest segments on the play field- but is much whiter than the typically very yellowed region under the slingshots in the pictures above. Probably will redo the blue and white graphics under the bonus region and the white on the sling shots before I re shoot the stencils so that when I clear coat I seal that in as well....

Yeah- if I got the game in this condition, I would totally just use frisket and a razor and go to town, but since I can just wipe it off and start over and since painting the solid colors is really just a few minutes (now that I know what the hell I am doing here) its probably more work, and in the end just restarting this will yield a higher quality finish. I want a razor sharp line everywhere... and although the lettering came out quite well... it too is just slightly wavy in a few spots and thats a lot harder to deal with. I am going to wipe this off and get back to work. Plus, I knew that I had a very few registration issues due to my peeling the transfer paper before the stencils had fully stuck down (probably another reason I got bleed) and this time, I will use less float solvent, push HARD on the squeege, let it DRY .... then spray the transfer paper from the top to wet it (and only it) to ease release... peel and spray the black to reveal... razor sharp lines

At least I can now say that in the end, all the work will have paid off and the graphic will look very very good, perhaps even be more or less invisible as even having been repainted, but thats asking a lot.. it will at least be very hard to tell. This was the goal, so with that in sight... away we go.

Oh... and now that I know that the lettering comes out perfect (and it is very nice) I can fix a few other issues that I was masking and leaving original in a few spots... so a few hours with illustrator and I will redo the lettering for the orange segment (the white region in the center bottom that I had not yet completed in the above picture). So it will be worth it, and better even that what I have now even if what I had now came out perfect.

Because the colors will never match original. I can point you to a number of restores that have done this, and it is so obvious and so mismatched that in my mind there is no point. Not trying to rain on anyones parade for those that use these. It is indeed simplicity and can be done in a few minutes compared to the time this is taking, but I can tell from across the room that someone threw down a overlay and cleared over the top- These games are all different now (in color tone) and unless I am the one making the tonal matches and printing the decal there is simply no way to get a quality color matched finish using a decal. For instance, the white alone on that decal would look completely out of place on this game, the white that I sprayed and is shown in the pics above is actually a very very dirty brownish-yellowish color compared to a true white, but on the pic I posted above even that is blatantly mismatched with 95% of the even more brownish-yellow white under the slings... so to get this to look they way I want, its just simply a matter of doing it by hand, painful, slow, but worth it when its done if you can walk up to the game and go "WOW" Thats in AMAZING condition, where did you find such a pristine play field. I want the game to look like its 40 years old, just in perfect condition.

Probably will never get there, but hey... it keeps me busy.

Thanks-
I Need to get back at this. Been busier than a one legged man at an ass kicking contest with work. Should have the bonus done, cleared, and move onto the rest of the game in a week or so now! Will post pics when done. I have to say, looking at the pics above and not having touched this for almost a month, I now see how close it is, and how nice it will look when done. SO CLOSE now! Glad I checked here, I needed to motivate.

Well- winter is dying a slow death here but the garage is warming up... so back at it.

I have been going through my stencil design and carefully creating the lettering (tracing... slow painful but I know it works out) for the player shoots again text in the orange on the lower part of the bonus area.

Here is the plan-

Finish the stencil-
Airbrush the whole damn thing white
Fill solid colors
CLEAR COAT
Sand to 300 grit (nice and grippy)
Apply final black stencil with water slide technique
LET IT DRY A FULL 24 HOURS
ROLL it HARD so its seriously tight
Spray the black
CLEAR coat.

Finish the rest of the play field and final clear.

We shall see how this goes. I need a few more degrees of overnight temp in the garage to trust the cure on the clear coat so I am taking my time here, but working on this again.

Ok-
Back at this again- I started (and have now finished if your wondering what the hell I was doing) the mechanical rebuild on a 1976 Williams Grand Prix EM that I picked up about when I stopped posting here (when I am not working, which is not often but also not a problem).

I have been working (SLOWLY) on finishing up the graphic stencil in illustrator for the bonus area-

I decided that I would re-letter the entire area- so I needed to recreate the fonts for

SAME PLAYER SHOOTS AGAIN (in the orange region at the bottom)

and

PLAYBOY (in the blue region at the bottom)

This entirely sucks and there is no way in hell you could ever make money doing it this way.... but I have three letter left to do and its looking real good..... can you spot the letters I still need to do?

Playboy_Lettering.jpg

think- G- I- N

Plan is to remove everything I did- possibly clear one more time-

Apply white everywhere-
Then hit with solid colors to fill everything in (the letters will mask the white)
Then clear the entire play field-

THEN float a stencil with the black lines and lettering over the hard clear- I can use a TON of float and manipulate this stencil until its perfectly aligned and then let it dry a day - very firmly squeegee it down.... hit it with black peel it off and see what the heck it looks like.

If it sucks- no big deal- wipe it off and try again until I get the black perfect-

Then- clear the whole thing again and finish the rest of the play field art- which is far far easier than what I have been doing and mostly will be done by hand or possibly with a knife and some mask.

I want this game done now and hope to get the play field done during the fall/winter so I can start putting this back together and working on mechanical. The cabinet should be relatively easy- just re touch a few spots.... Cannot wait to get into the electrical and work out the resistor paths and wiring for the LED conversion- this will be easy (I have another post on this and have a good plan)- then its going to be done up in bright ass pink and purples- I want this game to scream when its done. Hoping for at least acceptable results on the play field- I will not be happy if I see my work when I look at the game.

The final stencil is below (Letter "I" and "N" in AGAIN are not polished.... Bonus_ONEMORE!.jpg).

The reason there are offsets in a few spots around the insets -solid dark line does not line up with fine line is that the fine line is the mask to cover the plastic on the inserts but the original play field has a registration error I am not going to correct- it would have required removing ALL The paint down to wood... maybe that would have been a good idea if I started that way.. but this got complex and I was not intending quite this much work when I started...

Oh- forgot to add this last bit-

I think I have conquered the bleed that I had with the black paint that wrecked the last attempt-

The key to achieving razor shape lines with stencils, apparently- is to hit the stencil with a transparent base coat along the edges- twice- before you spray the black. If you let that transparent base coat dry it SEALS the stencil from the top.... then when I spray with black- the black CANNOT wick under the stencil!

Excited to spray this -

Thanks-
Just finishing up the last letter- it can take me 15 minutes to get one damn letter done- or longer... and I feel like I know at least a bit about what I am doing (this is FAR from the first time I have used illustrator).... but I bet an artist who uses it daily for their job could speed me up quite a bit...

Took a look and I think I can probably get the first coat on without needing to clear yet.. which will speed it up. But I need to be real careful getting up that now thoroughly dried coat off (wet/damp rag with slightly alkaline detergent for 30 mins checking often should work). If that comes of well... I am OK- defects and all I can just mask and spray unless there is something the mask will peel off... which is a possibility- this play field is a frigging WRECK.

Will be soooooo happy to be done with this (the major bonus area)......

Had to add this- if your curious what I mean by re-lettering the fonts...

Here is what I am doing=

tracing each and every font in Illustrator to as close as possibly make a perfect replica.... you can see part of the finished lettering here (its done!). For instance, on the base of the N I have a slant- it sorta looks like that on the play field I have (who knows) and I think it looks real good so thats the N for my play field... so its not going to be a precise copy, but damn good.... lets hope I can use a spray gun after all this practice.LetteringDetial.jpg

I did- In fact much earlier in this thread I even posted the font I thought was close.

Indeed- its close but no where near a match. There are two different fonts (at least) on the play field so I kinda got screwed here- thankfully in "SAME PLAYER SHOOTS AGAIN" there are 3 A's 3 O's and 2 S's etc... but the wording above it "PLAYBOY" is a different font... so I could re-use some letters and I had some luck shrinking and expanding across the play field- for instance "thousands" and "Super Bonus" etc... but in reality it was more or less one by one. Not that this took my anywhere near the time its been since I last posted here- but its hours and hours by the time you get it to look like the above-

In fact- the stencil looks so good I think I will have someone sand blast some acrylic and I am going to have it as a topper- Maybe do the different layers onto different plastic sheets and laminate them together and light each differently- but thats a LONG ways off... would be a super cool topper though and now that I have it done its free and takes little time to cut another one.

Curbfeeler-

Two things- In assbackword order-

Finding a font thats close and then attempting to edit that could possibly be easier- but its going to be very very dependent on your ability to turn a letter (typically a vector construct now days) from a font into an editable path. I am confident this is possible and there may even be tools in Illustrator designed to do this exactly- but even then, the location of the grab points (anchors) on the path are going to have to be where you need to edit or your going to end up doing a bit of adding and deleting anchor points etc etc.

For this reason- I decided to just do this myself. If you had the perfect color combo you could probably get illustrator to auto trace the elements just based upon contrast but my play field was so trashed that didn't work and in any case I was missing entire words and had to make them by finding the same letter in a different word (regardless of font size) on the play field and then tracing it etc. So both ways end up sucking a little bit- I only did one way so cannot really comment on the alternative. It MAY be easier- it may suck equally or possibly worse. I would guess each will have its strength.

I can post a pic of the path.

I use curve connectors at all points- really- even for those that are in fact close to square because nothing about those fonts when you look at them is even close to square so all my corners are rounded off which is how it looks on the game.

I find that less is MORE- if you have a straight line- even a reasonably straight line- just define its start and end- if you have a sharp curve I put a point at its beginning, apex, and end. No more, no less. Also- try to position anchor points symmetrically on symmetrical shapes. If I have an "O" I might start with 4 points and if that does not or cannot be made to work keep adding points that help you correct the misses- but really- keep it simple.

It is illustrating to use the select path and simplify dialogue in Illustrator- try adding a butt load of anchor points to some reasonably complex shape, get it looking OK (don't waste time here this is an exercise) then select the entire path- choose simplify and set the angle tolerance to zero and the accuracy (or whatever the other option is) to 100 (or perfect or whatever) and you will see Illustrator take your 45 point shape and turn it into a path with 20 or something, and you might be surprised at how much better it looks... then you can go back in an tweak.

In reality- I learned a bit about how and where to best place anchor points by doing the above so that now, when I have a shape good and choose simplify- Illustrator will remove points but its at a loss of fine resolution so I am convinced I am now doing better than it can and so I rely upon my eyes now... but I have been working on this a while.... just keep trucking and keep raising your standards- at some point you will go back to your first work and fix it cause it will now suck compared to your standards after you have it under your fingers.

Also- work at insane magnifications- I can see pixels from a ~8 megapixel image when I am editing paths to remake fonts.... In fact I count pixels (sometimes) to help me place symmetrical anchor points... so it gets detailed if you want it perfect.

Well... I consider this a victory and the start to the finish of the bonus graphic.

I managed to clean my shop over the holiday and catch up with some other house hold chores... and found an evening to take a look at the Bally.

I decided to repaint the graphics cause the first try sucked a$$... but none the less proved invaluable.

I know to spray clear prior to black to prevent bleed...
I know how thin to spray (multiple thin coats kicks the butt of thick coats).
I know that when Vid says to spray white first he means it (I did this but also forgot once and you learn quickly).

I am pretty sure Vid has mentioned the multiple thin coats over white... but I think he may have been holding back on us here, not having mentioned spraying clear first to prevent bleed... but maybe I suck at stencil application... none the less- I really hope this will push this to great.

I re lettered all as per above and now need to cut a stencil and respray.

Because- I stripped the old paint and prepped the table.

Here is what the finished (yeah.... about that) graphic I am removing looked like.

IMG_0213.JPG

I decided to try to remove it with simple green.
This does not work on acrylic set for some months in a garage.

I then decided that what the paint I had on there really represented was a crack filler- to level the play field. I took a wet sand approach. I used 600 grit wet sand paper (home depot) and simple green (as well) and used it to lubricate the sanding.

IMG_0214.JPG

It worked amazingly well. After all- I will be spraying it white, AND any color bleed would be the correct color. But I needed to remove the bleeding black entirely.

First pass releases a black sludge (black acrylic) looking like this.

IMG_0215.JPG

Then after wiping it down you can see that its obviously only taking black off... this looks really good...

IMG_0216.JPG

So have another go with the simple green and sand paper (I wiped off sand paper) ..And another and finally we get this...

IMG_0218.JPG

Notice how color is coming up now and its not all black... I went through and carefully ensured that I had erased all black acrylic- so the black there is original...a lot of the color is mine some is original some is clear over wood.. but it sanded flat and super smooth..

IMG_0219.JPG

And the entire table. Note that I have finished the black restoration of the center of the top of the table (the mansion and grotto and key graphic)... and that part of the table looks pretty good and its still missing chunks of color (only did black there)- I do all that by hand.. black to outline, then fill. Since its same color I don't need to fill to black, just close so it actually goes fast. And if your color match is perfect, or even really good, its near impossible to see. I need to do that after I spray the graphics here.

IMG_0220.JPG

Sweet-

Finished the full graphic stencil in 5 layers... white, blue, yellow, orange, black.

Cutting them now... will try to weed tonight and maybe I can spray a base layer tomorrow. I picked up a spray base from Createx Colors that I hope will work to seal the stencils between colors to prevent bleed (Its a not quite clear (very faintly milky) base coat that I hope will not be visible if it bleeds under a stencil.. but once it does and dries- when I spray color it should NOT bleed). Also picked up more of the colors I know I need to mix the right tones for this game... forgot how expensive these little bottles are!

It appears that this project is back on track- took a long break but now finding myself less interested in playing my games than working on this.

Hopefully the next post will have some solid colors sprayed in blocks... I am not sure how fast I will be able to get the black done, I need my garage to warm to around 60 to spray clear with the low temp activator... its currently about 40 in there... and I cannot heat it cause I need to blow all the fumes out after spraying so unless its at LEAST 55 out- cannot spray clear.

I guess this is the next post... indeed there are some solids-

See pics below-

I sprayed everywhere that white will be the BASE exposed color- with a white mixed to match the average of the play field. The white on the play field, which is hugely variable, makes this kinda hard.... I think if I ever notice it, it will be because its all the same color. So I decided I am also going to redo the entire white under the slings, because, of course, the white under the slings is by far the toastiest white on the entire play field. As it stands now it looks like the white I just sprayed is SUPER bright, if you look at the white on the lower part of the play field you will see that it matches better. The best part is, if I showed you the color I sprayed next to a white piece of paper, you would think I was spraying a tan- yet next to the toasted white under the slings it looks incredibly bright.

Basically,if you see white anywhere in the finished bonus area, its white now. I will be spraying a base white coat under the solid colors, but since those areas have a ton of inserts and I only need it to be a fairly even "primer" coat, I will spray those blocks of white as I put down the next stencil layers. Shoot white first, then color, then move to next color.

But- before I do that, to keep the white pristine, and to avoid further damage to the play field by peeling stencils pulling up a bit of the color. I am going to clear coat the entire play field first, then do blue, yellow, and orange, then clear again and finish with black. This is looking good, I KNOW the stencils work (did it once all ready) and now I feel like I have a strategy to finish this.

Unfortunately- its 17 out and the garage is a LONG way from 65 (2-part clear temp)... so it may be a while before i can move further forward here.

Ok- the white...

Image-3.jpg

Here are the blue and orange stencils, really just a close up of the lettering, so the white you see above will be the letters you see here once I weed the stencil, removing for instance- the inside of the B etc...

Note how incredibly clean the features are, the lettering looks smooth. This is very good for the next step.

Image-6.jpg
Image-2.jpg

And finally-

Since I cannot really work on this, and I don't want to weed the stencils until its closer to use-

I decided I would check to see if I was working with the best possible material...

I ordered a roll of the Oramask 813 material, because its cheap (yeah... well) and its transparent blue, which would potentially make for a much easier time in the next step or two. So, I cut that stuff on the Cameo I have.

I cut the Oramask 813 material a number of times, varying force and speed- At least on the Silhouette Cameo (remember this is a fairly cheap cutter)- I cannot get this to cut well. The 813 material is stiff enough that it drags the blade and the start and end point of cuts do not precisely align. This results in uneven lines and a very poor reproduction of the lettering, look at the S in particular... (I weeded a few so you could see). As a further result of this the blade tends to push the smaller "floating" pieces around and they tend to pop up from the stencil surface. Also, because the cuts don't align, its not a complete cut so you have occasional spots you would need to use an Xacto to finish- just a total fail for me. You will see that I did NOT use an X-acto to weed these (don't need it for GerberMask) and it does not work, just look at the S again (I tried weeding two).

I tried cutting so deep I was nearly though the backing, so shallow I could not weed (using down force adjustment) and then also tried varying speeds at these settings, and in between. It always drags the blade and where the cut meets its got a "j" tag where the blade curves in our out to intersect the path. I have it set to over cut, so its cutting far enough that you can ALMOST weed the pieces, but it never really likes to fully align and cleanly cut- so you never have the perfect shape.

The GerberMask material cuts precisely, like butter, and is just superior in every way- in my hands. Maybe someone with better equipment would produce perfect cuts in the 813 material, but with my relatively long experience using this equipment, I will NOT be using the 813 material- at all- for anything except projects with younger children where material properties and speed and see-through matter more than quality.

Image-5.jpg
Image-4.jpg

Yep-

Was coming here to freshen up the place and disturb the dust thats been accumulating on this thread-

Its warm again and I can spray clear in the garage-

I got a coat of white down over the blank slate- I shot clear over the top- I sanded with 500 grit wet to level and get a paintable surface. The play field is still seriously full of deep gouges in the clear where the paint is chipped off down to wood and the clear is low and there are obvious defects- but its getting a TON better- were on the third application now and the first was two thicker coats. Now I am just spraying enough to level it out and get a mirror surface- and then sanding back fairly hard to bring the clear down- effectively bringing the holes up- so they are gradually filling.

I actually came here to confess-

I was spraying the orange over the cleared white last night and FUBAR- I had to take it all off... but thats easy cause its on clear- so success for a strategy that allows redo's to obtain perfection, or at least get a coat of paint that looks exactly like the stencil with clean edges.

I was spraying and got a small edge too wet and then blew it around and got a wave in the thickness- I HATE THIS! So I decided I would wipe it off, then coat and use a heat gun to accelerate the process of coating and YOU CANNOT USE A HEAT GUN ON PAINT ON A STENCIL-

It peels off with the stencil- UGH.

So I took it all off, and just finished cutting and weeding another orange stencil and also just cut the black stencil-
Its a super detailed stencil and a challenge to get the small lettering for "thousands" not to chip up during cutting.

This seemed to work with the GerberMask-
Silhouette settings-

Depth 8
Speed 2

Not 1000% perfect but looking good... will report back.

I got the orange sprayed and the lettering came out fantastic!

Blue tomorrow- then clean then black to finish this off finally- I still have a LOT of work to do on the playfield- but its much easier, almost fun stuff... the only sucky part will be the blue and white stripes down below the bonus graphic I am currently working on, not hard at all- just a big area- and its got to be resprayed.

Here is what I got- I am now confident that barring any alignment fubar- and things are looking and measuring really good- so I think I am good- once I clear it and put the black down its going to look fantastic!

close.jpegIMG_1024.JPG

The letters/edges look just a tiny bit like they are ever so slightly frayed, I have not wiped it down-- so it will likely look near perfect after a very gentle pat down to pull up those flakes from peeling the stencil- and if they are still there after- thats just fine- those letters are fairly small- so the dots are incredibly small- it came out really well- I would gladly accept this if everything else goes as smoothly- two colors to go.