Hi All-

Well... here we go again. Got a 1978 Playboy for free. Probably saved myself 200 bucks, cause the only great part of the game is the back glass the electronics and the mechanical. The play field is moderately trashed with some medium sized areas worn through to wood, mostly lower dead center and a stripe down the middle of the grotto capture lane (all typical). The plastics are worthless and need to be thrown out now. The cabinet is decent actually, very clean interior no structural issues good paint for the most part with a little chipping along the bottom from people having it in storage and dragging it around on carpet with the legs off. The head is a little worse, some structural issues with the top trim piece being loose (can fix) and worse paint but stenciling is actually mostly pretty good.

So... I am thinking that I will get new plastics, top strip the play field and try to retouch the whole thing to as near to original as I can get it. I have done a hand retouched restoration before and it came out very well, but this has a bit more wear through to the wood and more lettering that would need to be restored... so its a step up the difficulty scale.

If anyone happens to have a better play field they want to sell... please let me know. Not willing to put CPR repro money into the game- so maybe someone has one they replaced but its in better shape than mine.

I managed to get all the wiring harnesses sorted and apparently plugged into the correct sockets cause power on and the game plays! Seems perfectly functional but for the fact that 50% of the bulbs are out, it had about 15 new bulbs in a bag in the cabinet and every place I have replaced bulbs they have worked immediately, so power is going everywhere (I intentionally replaced random bulbs across the entire machine to check this). Play is actually kinda fun, its very fast compared to my 1977 Gottlieb super spin, one year older but pure EM.. the SS games are a lot more powerful when your used playing the EM's.

So, thinking- what the heck, dump 250-300 into it in plastics, rubber, a few things like bumper caps etc, new glass... and do my best on the play field, clear it and play it. Why not- it cost me zero.

Pics follow for those interested.

All self explanatory... pics of game as I received it- did wipe down playfield and lightly wash with novus 2 on a rag. Nothing close to a cleaning, just getting big chunks off. The rest was not touched what so ever.

photo-39.JPG photo-40.JPG photo-41.JPG photo-42.JPG photo-43.JPG photo-44.JPG

and more

photo-45.JPG photo-46.JPG photo-47.JPG photo-48.JPG photo-49.JPG

Anyone care to tell me why I cannot just replace bulbs with LED. I see LED kits sold with a new lighting driver board.... why is that required? I would rather custom order my LEDs to color match and "sex" it up a bit... it is a playboy after all.

Found answer to question above by posting as independent Q-

Discovered that player 1 score display was flaky- flashing randomly over the top of the correct display, it was suggested to pull display and check all solder joins on board. Yep- 3 cracked solder joints were re-flowed and now player 1 display is rock solid and pretty! Yeah!

Ordering up a new air brush and some nice colors as well as the tacky cellophane type stencil- will strip top of playfield and remove from game, mount and start on paint restoration. Probably hit it hard with a magic eraser then either shoot a thin clear to lock in the good parts and begin with restoration or possibly, depending on how good the paint is- just go ahead with the restore.

Decided against the possibility of a overlay or a CPR playfield. I restored my first game using acrylics and a brush and the rub on rub off technique to fill in cracks in the colors and I find I actually really like seeing the old paint with the slight texture and cracking in it. So going for a restore while trying to maintain the appearance of a 1978 play field, just one thats not full of wear spots and defects.

Ok... after acquiring and assessing and generally thinking about if this was savable without having to invest 600+ dollars on a play field. I started the restore.

Thus far I have acquired a complete set of brand new CPR plastics, a new air brush and Createx paints with Frisket for the mask. I spent a few hours one night on the beginnings of the project and managed to top strip the playfield. Its much easier, working on the second machine, first one to get this far was a few tenuous days of careful work. One thing... which idiot decided that it would be a good idea to pre drill the play field for screws to hold down the wood rails (for the ball shooter lane etc) but then use a single screw to anchor the front of the rail and simply staple the rest in.

I was able to get two of the three long pieces off in good shape and intact. The third one was simply stuck and broke when prying between a staple. Oh well, no big deal, its a piece of wood... I can cut another and paint it to match... I clear all those parts anyhow. So. Here is a pic of the playfield top stripped. I need to get under and remove a few things like pop bumpers and drop targets but thats pretty easy. Should be working on full clean up with Magic eraser etc over the weekend and then paint work from there... until I am done which may be a good long while.

At least its a properly started project now with pics to prove it.

You will notice the lack of paint around the top of the bonus "box".... asside from that major issue the playfield is in pretty good shape and should come back to about new with some work. Hoping I can nail the black and white outline on the bonus. Thats got to be perfect or its not worth doing.

Bally_PB_topStrip.JPG

I have watched the entire video series from Chris on his restore/rebuild of a playboy.

This is my second fairly in depth project on a pin restore... and I learned a good bit from watching his videos, most importantly it has made me decide to go ahead and re do all the connectors on the game to the boards and the display.

My play field is in worse shape than I had hoped... and I started pulling the mylar off last night. I got the right side lower sling mylar off (it had two layers on it WTF). But there is a very very heavy layer of glue on the playfield now and I am going to get some goo gone to deal with it. Hope the paint stays down.

Last night I got the middle pop bumper and the remaining hardware off the game, two pop bumpers left and its totally clean on the top and time to seriously clean and Magic Erase this thing.

My tentative plan to deal with the game and the re-paint of the entire top of the bonus tracking (center of playfield between lower slings) graphic is I think something people will be very interested in... if I can pull it off.

I am going to purchase a Silhouette cutter, its marketed to scrap booking mothers and grandmothers... but its a very powerful tool. Basically its like a CNC lathe but instead of having a bit its got what amounts to an xacto blade mounted on the tip. You can cut cardboard stock, vinyl, and FRISKET with it.

So... I am going to take a pic of the region in question with a nice camera I have with a lens that has minimal distortion. Fix and align the image (I will lay rulers along the sides for scale and perspective) and create essentially a CAD image to send to the Silhouette cutter and cut a FRISKET mask for every color and perhaps multiple versions. Then, I will lay them out and starting with the largest solid color regions spray it with my IWATA HP-SPS gun with custom mixed CREATEX colors (per VID instructions).

We shall see how the heck this goes. Its probably beyond me to free hand the font and fine details in the black and white lines around the orange.

I spoke to the folks at Silhouette and its got plenty of detail, you could easily cut a 12 pt text document (so they say), which is well more than enough fine detail to manage the play field graphics. In regions where I have art work that needs subtle semi-minor repaints, like the hair of the brunette.. I will free hand that with the air brush. But I intend to use the Silhouette (if I can get it to work for this project) to do everything that I can possibly use it for as I suspect I will be able to manage a near perfect restore of the original playfield. Its a little faded but really not bad. I got a set of new plastics and the pinks are different but nothing to worry about, its still bright and kinda a fluorescent-ish slightly purple pink. Which is I think as it should be, it matches the cabinet more or less.

IF ANYONE HAS A FLAT SCANNER AND A BALLY PLAYBOY I WOULD SERIOUSLY LOVE A SCAN OF THE ENTIRE BONUS AREA!!! That would be the ideal way to do this, but I dont have an unlimited budget and cutter was met with a raised eyebrow, but only one... so I am good so far... but no budget for a scanner right now. And, would not do me any good, what I cannot do right now is recreate the text. If I have to I will find something close or try to pull from other regions of the game and photo, and attempt a conversion and reconstruction, but if you have a bally and can scan that region, I would seriously owe you.

Those with interest-

Here is the cutter.
http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Electronic-Cutting-Tool/dp/B005Y1CPSU/ref=sr_1_2

Ok, what the heck is the difference between Rubylith and Frisket? I looked it up and its some kinda two layered mask-ish thingamajig (thats its technical name for those confused).

And when you say a silk screen I am a little confused- I think your suggesting something different from my plan of using Frisket to cut a stencil- but have to admit I don't grasp exactly what type of procedure your implying.

Please be gentle I am an art virgin but willing to try anything once.

Ok... this now makes sense. I am however, unsure that you could cut Rubylith on the Silhouette machine. It allows you to set depth of cut and down force but I kinda wonder if it would be able to penetrate and cut only the top layer... might go through. Will have to try it.

I looked more searching for how detailed the cutter can get, and found someone who is essentially writing their own code to actually drive the cutter and they managed to get it to cut a 0.2 mm perfect square. Thats impressive as hell, and they are now using it to fabricate PCB masks at some quite high resolution... so absolutely this machine will produce stencils with precision FAR outstripping the under spray of the paint- so I am ordering one and will simply see how it goes.

This is going to be a while... so check back if your interested but honestly its going to be weeks before I get it and weeks more before I probably attempt painting from a cut template. However, the restore will continue in the background.

Free indeed.

As well, that's a pretty accurate color on the pics. it's indeed a bright pink with distinct purple in it. It was in a home in a basement since my wife's friend was young, so at least 25-30 years with no natural light. THe last 10+ yrs it had the head off wrapped up with the body also wrapped up sitting in a closet in a nicely controlled environment. I suspect the paint color is accurate to original, the play field closely matches the cabinet but a bit faded.

Well, I finally got over the "hump" on the play field restore!

Process is now complete in terms of the tear down and clean, although I *may* end up hitting a few select spots with the magic eraser again. I removed anything that sticks through or is attached to the play field, got all the parts more or less arranged so that I can put it back together again. Although I am much less worried about this - having done this once before. I find that the best part of pinball is that in reality they are very simple (in this era) mechanical machines and its kinda fun to take them totally apart and see how it works.

Anyhow, after removing anything attached to or sticking up above the surface of the play field...
And then using two entire large boxes of magic eraser and a full 500 ml bottle of isopropanol- the result being some sore fingers and a very clean, if also significantly damaged play field. But one that I believe is restorable to new condition with some time and effort.

I was super pleased that I got all 5 pieces of mylar off, the lower mylar guards in front of the slings was actually two sheets one laid over the other and I was super sketched out about removing that because the paint is so very bad in that section, but they came up without even a fleck of paint pulling. Then, my GooGone bottle did the trick, once again, removing essentially zero additional paint. The process of magic eraser ALWAYS removes paint, in fact I like to think about it in terms of "sanding" through about 1/2 of the paint on the playfield to remove all the grit.

Next post will be a bunch of pics of the process, its been shown before but for those interested in what it looks like and how far you can bring something back... or how bad it might look (perspective) when your done, I post a series with some detailed shots of the results.

I know... its possible to screw this up but I have done this before (not a playboy) and I am certain I will get this right. I typically take a good long time and work slowly, if I get a single small region dead on in 2 hrs I consider it a success. However, I admit the bonus region is a tough restore.... keep a watch here and see what you think as it progresses.

Those promised pics are coming now... was having issues with the post but I think the photos were too big... resizing now.

Here are photos in some reasonable order...

dirty stripped play field... my friends keep texting me awaiting the first "naked" photo of my playboy....

Then what happens after ME/Isopropanol
Then how it looks after cleaning and Novus 2 polishing.

Then. detailed segments of the playfield... I took shots of mostly bad areas although the upper 4 keys region is quite good if cracked.

PF_Dirty_striped.JPG ME_iso_dirty.JPG CleanPF_pre.JPG

And more... to be honest 95% of the problems are trivial to get perfect.. the only area that is going to test me is the bonus region... and that will be a firm test...

Bonus_pre.JPG Keys_pre.JPG Grotto_pre.JPG Playmates_pre.JPG BonusLane_pre.JPG Lower_pre.JPG

Hey Vid... or someone with experience on multiple restores like this... If I catch you back here, would you care to comment on what your recommendation would be for dealing with the literally hundreds of paint chips that came up. Its full depth to wood... in terms of the restore they are trivial to color and leave but then you have depth issues to deal with in clear. Trying to fix them first seems the legit path, but then you have a very very long road ahead trying NOT to get bondo anywhere but where its needed yet somehow manage to level the hundreds of spots without sanding through the other decent regions of paint.

To be honest, although I know this is going to suck to fix in clear, I am contemplating doing it this way, just hit it heavy with the air brush, maybe 3 coats to "fill" it up a little... start with white then 2 coats of color, and simply spray the first clear coat a little heavy and use a fine sand paper on an orbital to bring it level... but that is also real hard to do right. Taking something high down to level is a lot easier than bringing a low spot back up with clear.

Ok, sounds good. I have some nice clear sitting around but just enough for this first coat. Then I will spend the money to get another quart and activator after I finish the restore. All ready got the shooter lane pretty good. Not inspected for clear coat good, but close. So minimal work there. Inserts will be a pain as they always are. I guess thats up next.

Will post back when I have it cleared once with all inserts re glued.

Decided to modify this procedure a little bit. Since I actually like the aged slightly cracked look of the play field paint on these old pins, but I don't like to see big wide open cracks through to the base coat (which is white) I am going to go over all the solid colors with the air brush and real lightly spray followed by a light wipe down with a cloth- in my experience this will fill the cracks with the correct color and even out the slight variations on color on the play field. At that point, before working on redo of artwork, I will clear the PF. Then, I have a nice solid clear coat base to deal with for sticking down the cut stencils and spraying onto, and if I fubar I can simply wipe the entire coat of paint off the clear with a little solvent or even lightly sanding. In this way I can keep the original slightly faded colors, clean up the cracks and fill most of the chips in the solid regions, lock it in with clear and finish the project focusing on the hard part.

I spent a while last night going over the play field with a very careful eye using more magic eraser and isopropanol to remove any dirt or fade that looked like I could get it up. I also paid careful attention to the shooter lane and the EDGES of the play field all the way around. I have learned that those are typically waxed or in some way treated and if you not hit it hard with magic eraser when you spray clear it sometimes has a little trouble laying flat on the very edges (not that you would ever see it as all of that is covered in the game)... but since I am trying to take this up to a very nicely finished project- well... that would just bug me. So, its ready to paint and wipe all solid colors. The shooter lane came out pretty much perfect, beautiful wood grain. Amazing really based upon where it started, got lucky there for sure because some times its simply near impossible to bring it all the way back. This region will look brand spankin new after its cleared.

Next project will be to drag my wife out to the shop and sit down and mix up larger batches of color for all the play field colors, when we get them to match I will bottle it up and use it for the entire project. I know that without her help I will never get them right... but with her help it comes out literally perfect.

I am literally a little bit color blind. Men and women see the same colors so its not a matter of... have a guy do it cause then it will look right to guys... I just happen to be handicapped in this arena. If women in fact see color matches better than men, I do not know this for a fact. But considering that color blindness (at least common versions) are X-linked (as in the X-chromosome, but were now far afield from our topic) the number of women suffering from this issue is going to be real real small compared to men... so they are to be more generally trusted on color.

Time to get impatient!

I ordered the Silhouette Cameo cutter last night. I found a "good" deal for a new machine bundled with a bunch of tools to enable fine removal of cut segments and purchased their upgraded designer studio software which enables the use of CVS files which are vector graphic representations that can be scaled continuously- which may be invaluable to me. In this way I can create my stencil in illustrator or photoshop, export a CVS file, bring it into the Silhouette software and using the ruler ensure its scaled perfectly and then cut it.

I went back and forth about even going ahead with the purchase cause its expensive, however I decided that this tool will have more than one use, that the play field is a lost cause (in terms of my ability to retouch by hand) without it and that its still less than about 1/3 the price of a CPR play field repro, and I actually would much much rather have an original play field. So- I did it.

Funny though- around my parts its known as a toy of the local house wives used for scrap booking and labeling shoe boxes (right up my alley wouldn't you know )- but as soon as I told a few friends about this I had offers to actually give me cash to help with the purchase so they could use it for all sorts of stuff unrelated to scrap booking! I ended up just going my own and telling my friends that they are free to use it if they just purchase a new knife and cutting mat... but I am thinking this will end up being used a bit more than even I anticipate.

Will do- It arrives today, I spent some time with a square and a nice camera with a good lens, hanging out over the play field balancing on a step ladder to try to get a square shot ... looked good on the camera. Will play with making stencils in a bit- for now----

I spent a few hours with a couple real fine paint brushes and the black Acrylic from Createx Colors.

I retouched literally hundreds of small areas and fine lines starting in the center of the playfield. I am not going to claim these are final pics, cause the color has not been retouched at all, and I probably need to look at the black again.

There is one area I think I have wrong, if you look at the first picture and the girl on the right- look at her right eyebrow, I thought I saw a black line kinda connecting the top of that with her hair so I carefully recreated it but now I am not so sure it should look like that. There were a TON of chips through the black lines EVERYWHERE... Let me know how you think its going.

REMEMBER- I have not done anything with the colors, so there are still major defects in the art but the black outline should be very close to good on these pics. Obviously this just a start, but I was very very happy with how the mansion came out and its a great place to start because the pop bumpers nearly completely cover it from direct view, although I have no issue with how it came out. The bonus FREE ball area and the center #5 key were hammered, I reconstructed a lot of the stenciled lines and I think it came out real straight. Any slight issues will be corrected when I go back to fill and retouch the white, yellow, orange, pink, or blue. But as of now, its a start and so far I am feeling good about this. I had to reconstruct some lettering, like the "W" in When Lit on the extra ball and the #5 on the center Key... not completely but enough that I was happy to be done and have it look decent.

Let me know if you see things I am doing that I should change...

Mansion_BLACKdone.jpg EXTRA_Ball_BlackDone.jpg Key5_BLACKdone.jpg

Missed the sand part! Will DO! THANKS!

Play field will be cleared once I get done dealing with the fine detail work, I feel more comfortable doing this on the original surface for some reason. Never tried the other way but this currently is not hurting anything and I have no intention of working on large areas with a air brush until the play field is cleared.

One other question-

I note that on-line and for sure at my local art supply store, although Createx has a wide selection of colors their opaque line is very limited and is in the primary color or at least simple, red, green, blue, white types. Their transparent line has colors that are very very close to the pink, yellow, orange, and blue... and I am currently writing down "master formulas" for the correct mixing ratios to get the color right with my wife's help. Is the idea here that you need to spray it with multiple coats? Cause one or even two coats with these does not cover- not even close. I was trying to avoid having to re spray entire blocks of color because once I do that, its going to look different than anywhere else because the cracking and slight color variations will be replaced with a nice even layer of paint and I am concerned about this, I am also unsure I want to commit to redoing entire color blocks on the play field- thoughts?

I still need to deal with the inserts- Got a little ahead of my self- I guess I will attempt the remove and re-glue method so I can take those without graphics and flatten them. Thats now the next item... painting is on hold. Will use Vid guide to work through this.

OK-

Here is what I am going to do.

Remove and re glue all inserts-
Clear play field.
Retouch ALL black-
Deal with colors starting with white-
one way or the other get it right- either wholesale repaint or touch up.

I am off the fence, I will deal with the chips and the solid colors after its cleared and sanded. Never done this, but I am going to take the experts advice here and if it takes me a month of frisket and fine razor work... well.. so be it.

I have leveled inserts this way on another game, it works great... no sanding for me. Thanks again- I owe you a beer- at least. Very much appreciate your taking the time to help me do the right thing. I have read your entire guide, its just hard to take the leap and completely change how I work even though I have only 1 other game under my belt, that came out so well I was just worried about trying something new. Over it- moving on.

Will keep a lot of info flowing into this forum so as to ensure I do not skip steps- THANKS!

Sweet-

I have the CPR close up photos but am very hesitant to use them to retouch a original play field. Its close but not exact I think... so I very much appreciate your taking the time to look and let me know. I will continue to post Q's about this kinda of detail when/if I run into it again. If you happen to have a reasonably intact grotto lane, and a shot of the playmates on the left side (single targets for each mini girl face) and the brunette's face and hair (as a close up) I would really appreciate that! Those are the most worn areas for me asside from the bonus but since I will be doing that through the cutter... I don't need a close up to go from by hand.

THANKS

AWESOME!

Your awesome- Thanks SO MUCH!

I spent last night and a little bit today working on prep to clear the top once, which means that I needed to basically clean the rollover insert which means taking out the rollover star. I was very very nervous about this, these parts I really really want to keep original because the colors just look so great after 40 years. But plastic brittles after 40 years.

I got going on that which lead to the next and what do you know, I got every insert cleaned and polished with Novus 2 from below. I used an exacto to scrape hundreds of little tiny "sap" droplets off the grey pain on the underside of the playfield and scrape up aged old goo around the edges of the through holes (actually this was minor, but present variably. I ended up basically finishing by cleaning throughly including all light sockets. I still have mechanical to do, and did not take apart and clean any assemblies, but its taped up so no through holes exist and I was AMAZED at how well the roll over start and everything else came out. I need to get some epoxy to hit the inserts with, but I will NOT be popping them out, none are remotely loose so I will rim them with the play field suspended above me so I can get a nice bead around them and the wood without it dripping into the plastics... ANyhow, next post should be a clear coated top ready for true art work restoration.

Check out how clear the rollover is and how clean that star came out (its through a zip loc bad- the picture) and the underside is not bad at all.. I may or may not touch up grey- its very minor with a few wear spots but looks great this way and its orignial so probably leave it alone.

RollOver_Insert.jpg RollOVer_STar.jpg BottomPF_readyForClear.jpg

The sad part of this, it literally took me over 1.5 hours to clean the star roll over insert, possibly more. I was using a very fine xacto to pick out the hundreds of globbed on dirt particles in the smallest corners until I could not see any more dirt...

Got the top completely sanded with 600 grit until the shine came off- I especially focused on every plastic insert and hit it with 600 grit until it was very smooth and dull so the clear will bond there and also so that any scratches that might have been there are now removed. This ended up working real well, I might have very very slightly degraded a few of the numbered inserts but these will be trivial to bring back to new with a hand retouch.

Finally got a bottle of plastic epoxy and will glue up inserts and then spray it. That should happen this weekend- Will post pic of this when the initial clear coat is done and then of course as the restore occurs with the paint. Until then- anxious to have this finished so I can get this thing done and move on to mechanical on the play field parts while also working on the head. There is a structural problem with the top trim piece- I have it removed and got all the staples out without further damage. Planning on using a few dowels to pin it with liberal glue. Then bondo to smooth and repaint all white.

I am indeed going to be clear coating over the art work that I restore, likely 2 coats unless something goes wrong and I need a third but this should not occur. I indeed may need to do that, but no big deal, hoping to keep the clear really thin to avoid these types of issues. I kinda went about "widening" the insert pre clear by sticking some 600 grit folded up in between all the points of the star in the insert and sanding until smooth. This I hope will be enough else you have to be very careful not to dull the clear on the surface after its all done!!!!!

I will also remove any clear from the initial coat that gets in there... so I think I should be good.

I had seen your thread, I spent a while going through as many play boy threads as I could to see what people had been doing,. Yours came out absolutely superb. It looked like you had ended up salvaging the old lockdown bar, but it came out very nice. What did you do to polish it? I have ended up using a drill with a polishing pad and coarse, medium, and fine cut compounds for metal polishing, but its impossible (nearly so) to do this well on a part with as many contours and ins and outs as that.... would you mind telling me what you did to bring it back? Looks awesome.

My cabinet thankfully is in awfully good shape structurally, with some paint work needed but nothing major. Whew... Yours came out great, the gloss white looked great. I will be repainting the front of the head (whats behind the glass) as mine is faded with wood grain and dirt showing through... The rest I will have to match colors but thankfully my cabinet is not faded much at all...

Sweet-

I have all that stuff... I admit to having forgot how well my wire brushes worked (and that I even had them!!!) on the legs of my gottlieb SuperSpin, and didn't think to pull those out for the job at hand... Thats why I start thinking about what I need to do and ask Q's before I do it... cause I don't do this all the time and forget little bits and pieces of what the heck I am supposed to do!

THANKS!

Some progress has been made-

I got the play field completely ready for clear took pics of how I set it up, the gun I used, and what it looks like after a single coat on top of a Magic Eraser/Isopropanol cleaned play field that was Novus-2 polished (as an additional cleaning step) and then 600 grit dry sanded (no water on wood!!!) as a prep for clear.

Here is what I did PRIOR to clear coating.

Inspect EVERY insert for dirt and remove with whatever means necessary. I do this on the top and the bottom since you cannot always tell where the dirt is so I just deal with the bottom and the top together even though the clear only (duh) hits the top. I then lightly sanded the roll over star insert in between the edges of the star cutout in the insert to remove dirt stuck there and to ensure it operates silky smooth when its done.

I went over EVERY insert with a light under it and sanded with 600 grit until I could not see any scratches deeper than the sand paper was making and ensured it looked good wet. There were two inserts with "defects" in them, I discovered they were deeper scratches (maybe even shallow cracks) that had filled with what I am guessing was wax build up. It was a white material I could pick out with a fine Xacto razor. I got one to the point that I had a now relatively deep (mm or so) scratch but one that was clean and when wet would look the same color as the rest. The other insert, of course its the ONLY one you look directly through when playing, the one right down at the center of the flippers- had a crack/scratch that was deeper and I did not feel comfortable digging much more than a few mm down to remove the wax/gunk build up for fear of cracking it. This one had two or three problem areas- so I took it as far as I felt I could then simply left it. The defects are now really minor but if I tell you they exist and back light it and you look for them you will see them.

Once I had the inserts where I wanted it, I lightly sanded with 600 grit again over the entire play field ensuring that every insert was hit well across the entire surface (so the clear has some thing to grab) as well as ensuring that every inch of the play field was dulled. I inserted old bulbs into the exposed sockets and propped the play field up on 2x6 decking stood on edge with moving blankets on top of a small table, then drapped moving blankets over the 2x6 and put the play field on that, stuffing exposed ends with additional blankets to ensure NO CLEAR could get at the underside. I lightly sanded and cleaned the edges of the play field being sure that no tape was on that and fully sealed any metal pieces (such as the hangers) with tape.

This got me to here. I used the windshield washer bottles to ensure the 2x6 decking would stand up- anything I didn't care about getting a little clear coat on would have worked well, these happen to fit tightly between the rim of the table and the 2x6 so it worked out. I then used a air gun tip to blast the surface of the play field with high pressure air to clean it off, as well as hitting the blankets just to be sure no crap came up with the HVLP gun air volume.

The HVLP gun I use is one I have been using for a number of years in furniture restoration/building and pinball work. I have sprayed a lot of different material with this including base tints, laquers, 2-part urethane clears etc...

For this coat, I wanted a really THIN layer- just thick enough to lay flat on a good surface- I was NOT trying to begin leveling much of the play field. Thats not a good idea for the first coat for a lot of reasons- you never know whats going to happen with too much solvent on top of crappy old paint...

So- I mixed up a cup of clear, set the gun to about a 4 inch fan width and a pretty low material feed rate running the gun at 80 PSI air. I sprayed it real quick single pass, inspected and hit the shooter lane again (I wanted to build a little thickness here so I could sand it a little harder to make it perfect early on) as well as areas that were down to wood as the clear was absorbing in a little bit there and any where that looked like it was so thin that it was not going to level right.

That resulted in the last pic,

Still wet- but now "dust free" about 15 mins after spraying.

I think this came out about "perfect" for what it was supposed to be, a thin working coat that I could wet sand to somewhat level and provide for a substrate for acrylic air brush work.

PF_readyforClear_PRErestore.jpg HVLP_gun.jpg CLEARPF_PRErestore.jpg

Here are some closer shots of some of the regions after the clear coat.

The next morning (about 14 hours after clear coat) I wet sanded the entire play field with 600 grit sand paper to begin the very first part of leveling this thing. There is a lot of work to be done in getting this to be a mirror flat surface, but after wet sanding I was surprised at how much is now looking at least closer to level. The 3-4 coats of paint I will be spraying to fill and repair will help fill yet more into the low spots but eventually this is going to take a careful hand and a few more coats.

The first coat used 1/4 cup of material MAX. I cleaned my gun material reservoir out and pulled pretty much 3/4 cup of the clear out and that does not cover what was in the lines etc, so this entire play field was coated with less than 1/4 cup of material.

Here are the close up shots of the shooter lane, I am pretty happy with this, no way a 1987 game in this shape is going to come back to new without taking out a lot of material, so to get it this good without gouging out the shooter lane made me happy. I had done more work with touching up the black on the mansion and the two small girls, you can still see areas of color I need to fill but honestly, this region is looking pretty good all ready- It will be as close to perfect as I can make it soon but here is the "best" part of the game after the first clear coat.

The bonus looks terrible! But the more I look, the more I am sure this is going to come out sweet! Now I have some serious motivation to start on the acrylics.

CLEAR_shooter_PRErestore.jpg CLEARPF_PRErestore_bonus.jpg CLEAR_PRErestore_mansion.jpg

THANKS for the pics of the girls around the mansion, I made a few changes to my touch up of the right eyebrow on the blond and now it looks awesome. I cannot wait to get started but sadly will be delayed a few weeks with other things on the calendar. Oh well- updates in a few weeks when i can get back at this.

Those pics are odd orientation in the post but if you click on them they come up in a window and orient correctly... I hate that! Oh well

Thanks- I knew about those... only issue is I am not really trying to restore a CPR play field... thats why I had asked for photos (nicely provided!!) of an original. I can see many alterations between the original and the CPR just looking at mine so I will not be using CPR photos to retouch this. I was actually surprised at some of the minor details they alter, I guess its not really supposed to be a 1 copy, their artists presumably hand draw these based upon on original but I doubt they are much interested in making it a perfect copy- one could simply scan them and be done (but for the legalities of then selling such a product).

Anyhow-

I wanted to post a photo of what it looks like after I have finished wet sanding this first coat of clear. The idea here is to nearly sand through the coat so you bring down the major part of the surface to a nearly uniform flat surface. The low regions will still look shiny since i block sanded they do not get hit by the paper so they still have the shine. Here is a typical region, its looking a LOT better than I even thought I would get after a thin first coat. The next coat (after paint is done) will be another thin one, and yet more sanding continuing to slowly fill in the low spots until I get it perfect. I bet I am looking at about 3-4 top coats to get this level--- but if each one is super thin and well sanded it should not build all that much overall in thickness, just fill and level. Anyhow, time to paint, and paint some more.

WetSand_PRErestore.jpg

Alright, some progress has been made.

First- Although I was apprehensive about the time it would take to accurately cut Frisket on the play field to do things like re paint the black 5 "Keys" playboy bunny that is over the top of the inserts along the top and right in front of the first pop bumper. Yeah, it took me a couple hours to cut it, minutes to spray it twice and heat gun it- 30 seconds to pull it and it looks perfect.

Do not hesitate, I have done an entire game painstakingly by hand once before, USE frisket.

Tip from my very early experience, if your painting black and do NOT want to erode an otherwise good line into white, just cut shy of the white that way when you pull the frisket if your line is uneven its only the new black going over the old thats shaggy, no way that shows up whereas if you bleed out into the white you now have an obvious bleb.

And, although I have pics I am going to wait cause I want to get more done and I think I am close...

I got my adobe illustrator file for the bonus graphic done, I think its probably damn close to a 1 perfect reproduction of the black stencil for that region. Here is a pic.

If ANYONE has a good ORIGINAL GAME!! NOT A CPR!!!!!

Can you look at the relative thickness of the lines real carefully and let me know if I have it right. Hard to tell from my play field and the pics I find on line are all skewed. Its within a point but if you find anything that looks even slightly off let me know.

Here is a pic of that file, laid on top of a perspective corrected and scale perfect (as near as I could get it which is less than 1/64 of an inch off over an 11 inch run, at least thats what it was comparing the scale between a ruler laid on the play field in the pic and the ruler in Illustrator and Photoshop as I corrected perspective. Every line is dead straight in the image but for the very top right and if you look carefully my outline is a tiny different on the top right as compared to top left, but my art work is ever so slightly off and I need this to match...

Plan is to attempt cutting this, which is probably a disaster because nothing will hold together after I cut the black... so I will probably do this in 3-4 stencils, just remove stuff until I can see it holding together after cutting the frisket and then try it out.

I hope to get this stencil cut on my Silhouette Cameo cutter this weekend, I will post pics after the disaster or success regardless.

Bonus_CUT_OUTLINEjpg.jpg Bonus_CUT_file.jpg

Holy Sweetness Batman-

I printed a copy on our printer and just ran down and put it on the play field, it looked good, so I used a scissors to cut out a few areas to reveal if its in fact matching up and near as I can tell its perfect, good enough to paint!!!!!

However, its seriously going to suck to figure out how to cut a useable stencil... trial and error I guess.

I did note that right in the middle above the SUPER BONUS wording I have a very slight protrusion of one line segment across another. Will fix before cutting, but looks good enough to at least attempt cutting frisket.

ALSO, Please note, since I am restoring I built the stencil to cover mostly only parts of my bonus area that are badly damaged or entirely gone. So, if you notice that I do not cover certain areas its because they don't need this level of repair in my game. So its not supposed to be 100% complete. Although it is 100% complete right across the top... the words "super bonus" on my game are GONE.
However, there was enough of the S and the U of SUPER to get the font size and placement perfect, and enough of the S of the BONUS to get that aligned... so the words should really really look exactly correct down to even minor details.

Again- VERY MUCH appreciate criticism and commentary on what this graphic is missing or not doing well. Again, DO NOT LOOK AT A CPR play field to compare this too, its is NOT from a CPR, they are different from the original in MANY MANY ways when you start really really looking very carefully so I am absolutely certain that this would not work on a CPR. And also, since these are stenciled, this matches what are likely misalignments from perfection that exists on my play field so if the outlines are slightly different on your play field (the black circles around the inserts) its likely they are different on almost every game at least subtly. I am concerned with the relative THICKNESS of the lines for the graphics. On my game I have very little to go with but for broken up segments here and there across the top, so if you see that I have a thick line where it should be thin or other issues I would very much appreciate knowing this before I paint it.

Oh some buried trivia for ya... The words SUPER BONUS use the following font.

Grenoble Serial Extra Bold -with a high degree of accuracy, it cannot actually be that, cause that font was not around in 1978 but its a damn near perfect match. Kinda Amazing really...

Discovered that I may be able to actually cut this all in one pass, and using transfer paper, place the stencil onto the play field and spray.

Unsure if transfer paper will work for Frisket but its good with vinyl so guessing that it will have enough tack to hold the cut stencil in place so that I can remove all the cut areas, then I guess you peel off the backing to expose adhesive, and carefully align stencil, press in place and peel up the transfer paper and the frisket *should* remain in place!

Going to find some clear transfer paper...

anyone done this before?

Yeah... flat would be a requirement for a decal and there is basically no way I could get this all to line up if I cut 5 different stencils and then tried to do this in 5 passes... it would look terrible...

Since I went ahead and purchased the cutter and kinda want to make this work- for now... I am going to stick with the idea of a stencil. I have been reading some forums in the art world and in the sign world and I *think* this might work. I am taking from the vinyl sign industry standard practice... which is to cut a complex design out of vinyl, apply a transfer tape to the entire design from the top, remove the cut sections then peel off adhesive backing from desired cut design and using transfer paper place the whole thing all at once, peel off transfer paper and the fancy cut vinyl is left stuck to the surface ... since I have a stencil its the same principal but instead of vinyl I will be cutting a negative outline of the design....

I have come up with this as a general work flow..

1) Gently press the frisket down onto the low tack rubber cutting sheet for the cutter, this will hold the frisket in place (adhesive backing down) during the cut. Then cut the design all at ONCE.

2) Reduce the tack on ANOTHER intact frisket sheet by lightly adhering it to a cotton T-shirt.

3) Apply the reduced tack FRISKET sheet over the TOP of the cut frisket stencil still on the rubber cutting sheet. Then pull the whole thing (still in one piece held together by the top sheet) off the cutting mat and turn it over exposing the adhesive mask of the cut stencil.

4) using a tweezers/forceps/razor REMOVE the cut out "black" sections of the design- the TOP intact frisket sheet should hold the rest in place.

5) Remove the adhesive backing exposing full strength adhesive on cut stencil sheet still being held together in precise alignment by the top sheet of frisket

6) Apply to play field carefully aligning.

7) pull off top - here is where I need to hope that the cut frisket stencil sticks to the sanded clear coated play field well, so that pulling off the top sheet will not peel up the stencil in sections... and paint...

I am doing this, maybe tonight... probably this weekend.. next post will be results.

OK... I could not resist one more post even though its not yet painted.... thats in about 3 hours.

I tested the cutter last night with a mostly complete file.

This thing is AMAZING.

Using Frisket, I can set the speed and cut depth of the knife to COMPLETELY cut the frisket and leave the backing untouched. I then tested the ability to cover the top of the cut frisket with another intact sheet, removing the backing to see if it would then expose the completely cut sheet, or if it would pull out crap tons of the stencil ruining it.

It WORKS. This is going to be amazing.

I then decided that the easiest way to do this, is to paint the entire region (maybe mask off some of the good graphics) white (color matched to the rest of the game) and THEN hit it with black and the stencil.

I then decided that there was little sense in dealing with hand touchups and registration issues (there are not any, but precise alignment will be tough)- so I extended the SVG file I am making to include the entire bonus region!

Here is the file I will be cutting and stenciling tonight!

Although I am posting this here, the quality is not going to be sufficient for anyone to really reproduce this. If this works, and there is any interest I may be willing to cut stencils for people for a reasonable fee and send two sets. Since or the most part, these games wear here and in the Grotto, and the Grotto is easy to touch up and also not right in your face, this may solve 99% of the wear issues on many existing play fields.

Bonus_CUT_file.jpg

AWESOME-

I was seriously hoping someone like you would wander in. I am actually cutting my second attempt at the full stencil right now... watching it cut now. The first one I slowed the blade down thinking it would do a better job. Turns out it cuts deeper (I guess the blade "floats" a little at a higher speed) and then my cutting mat is new and so sticky that its pulling the backing off the frisket! Oh well... a few swipes on the shirt and a faster blade speed and we try again.

I will seriously look at that if this is more than an evening of screwing around. THANKS a TON>

Just a quick pain in the ass break...

Cutting frisket is easy, pulling the cut pieces out is a PITA- without killing the rest. The transfer film makes this easier but currently the frisket is sticking WAY to hard to the stencil. I need a very very very light tack.. may baby powder frisket FIRST to use as transfer film... I may be moving to a new material... last try for the night soon.... using baby powder.

This is as much a note to myself as it is useful to anyone but someone doing this exactly...

But my best Frisket cut by far is speed 6 depth 3 blade setting 2

Using speed 2 depth 3 blade 2 cut through the paper
Using speed 4 depth 3 blade 2 did it a little
Using speed 4 depth 2 blade 2 didn't cut through every section of the frisket

Speed 6 depth 3 seems better... now if the baby powder works I might actually paint something tonight... else it will be new material. The cutting is perfection, so its just a matter of finding something that will work- overhead transparency material comes to mind as well as what was mentioned prior...

Ok... so I got a perfect stencil cut, got it weeded to almost perfection (lost two tiny frags but could have re cut them alone) only to discover that I was off by 1/8 inch in height for the very top of the bonus area (which was not in the picture I had taken so I made it up knowing it needed to be checked). I also had one word too close to an edge and it cut into the edge so made two corrections, and now have a weeded 99% correct stencil and its totally completely 100% on- absolute perfection as near as I can tell in terms of where the black lines are and the cut segments on the stencil and all other features. Now, I think I need new material. There seems no hope for such a complex fine detailed piece with frisket. I need something i can almost smear around until finally aligning it and then letting it set. I wonder if I could spray the clear coated sanded play field with water and use that as a lubricant to float and align the cut stencil.... will see and fool around until I get this, but at least its going to be 100% when I finally get one on and mounted.

However, this is totally worth it, Once I figure this out I will be cutting them for everything, its so easy.... if I can just get them mounted on the play field. I can always do this in pieces but currently dont see that actually helping a lot, frisket is floppy... new material will likely make my life a lot easier so probably bail out for the weekend and sand the shooter lane... although I posted a pic and said it looked OK for a 78 game- upon further reflection it looked like crap. Taking it down to full wood grain only, I will even it out for depth manually, but it needs to look perfect or close. So... something to keep me busy.

YES YES YES!

I got a perfect stencil cut, pulled the backing off leaving the entire thing intact. I tested using water to float the firsket on the play field and it seems to work. Will be misting entire play field (remember its clear coated so no harm) with Reverse Osmosis/Deionized water (to avoid even any bit of residue) and floating this sucker over the top. Cross your fingers but its looking superb so far.

I was chicken little when it came to painting the entire graphic area white until I had faith that this would work, but no turning back now. I mixed up a pure white (which is to stark white compared to the faded colors I am otherwise matching) adding some orange and some sand color. Its really white compared to whats the current faded white but looks too yellow to me compared to true white, so I am going to add in another 1/3 of pure white and spray it. This way the white will be pretty stark but just aged enough looking to match the rest of the colors, which now means I will be repainting every segment of white on this game... oh well.

Black is now almost complete. I have a few more small areas to cut and will spray it all at once but once I get the white over the graphic (Bonus region- only spraying where its either white or black, not going over the colors) and then float and spray the decal I will post pics.

Excited now.

I so wish I was waxing a play field...

Two things-

The stencil worked reasonably well, but for the lettering I would call it extremely good

I had to completely remove every bit of paint that I applied cause in an effort to float the stencil using water so that I could align it... I discovered that the glue on the frisket is water soluble (at least a little) and it comes off the frisket and leaves a nice thick layer of glue on the play field after I lifted the stencil- Which only came off with GOO Gone.

However, I learned a number of things and will make some subtle adjustments to the stencil in Adob Illustrator. I also learned a number of things about cutting SVG files, in particular that you get or can get strange alignment issues (where it cuts a good distance from the line) depending on which settings you use in saving the file...

So- I am done for now, not going to use Frisket. I need a semi rigid stencil material with almost a pressure sensitive adhesive. Going to a few local sign shops to speak with the pros.

Totally unsure how this is going to turn out, the lettering may have to be done with water slide decals. But I think I can get the graphics perfect with some more experimentation. Its now clear that I likely could have done this by hand at least as quickly and I even started to do so but decided I want to give this one more solid try with the right material because if I can get it to work its MUCH easier than doing it by hand. However, paying the price for "innovation" and learning new stuff now... TIME>

Ok... got some real stencil material- Recommendation from a sign shop and a guy doing high end automotive paints (really amazing stuff) was-

Gerber 15 SM-4 GERBERMASK 1 ULTRA

This is a white 3M (I think- branded as GERBER) low tack stencil material. Its WAY stiffer than Frisket which should greatly aid in stretch distortion and I hope in the lettering details.

I could not get the blue product recommended by prior post but this should be very similar although not transparent which in this instance is fine, all I want to do is line up the existing black art work with the stencil which is to reproduce the black, so if I can see it through the cut out I know I am good everywhere else. Since I want to go over the top (I don't think I want to re do the entire thing) and preserve the existing color this should be well more than good enough.

Then I got the RTape Clear Transfer tape (as recommended by above and confirmed to be product that indeed the shop and the auto guy both also use with the GERBER stencil material I puchrased)

And a 32 oz bottle with a spray applicator that is designed to float the stencil over the surface (while not dissolving the glue DOH) enabling my aligning it before it sticks down (which failed miserably with Frisket)...

This should go much smoother.

All in all- a giant PITA but there is no way I see to do this other than totally bail out and just throw on a decal which would not match the rest of the play field colors... This may yet happen but obviously I am willing to learn and try (or try to learn) new things... so we shall see. For sure not going to be purchasing more stuff to try this... its now getting relatively expensive although aside from the purchase of the cutter I am not really that much into it, maybe 70 in materials and if I get this to work I can use them all over the place (especially on the cabinet).

OK, the new material is a completely different story, it cuts better, it weeds like a dream, and I am regaining some confidence.

After spraying through the words as a test I noted that although the font I mentioned is the best match for whats on the play field, and it looks OK if you just see it on the screen, its no good on the play field.

So, I spent literally a few hours taking close up pics of the lettering and re-creating pixel by pixel (literally from shots from a Nikon D300) the lettering.... its 99 % done, I discovered I didn't get a shot of lettering with a "R" in it, so will do that and cut. Here is the difference, I think if you compare to prior, its much more obviously correct if you also look at a play field shot.

This- aside from the missing "R" is as perfect as I can make it, and will be cut.

I also made block stencils for all color, one for White, one for Blue, and one for Orange, these are also shown. I will spray the block colors (I masked off the good lettering that exists- as you can see), then the white and finally the black. Should have pics of everything by Sunday, regardless if I end up looking for another play field and bailing out or find success. Seriously considering the wisdom of bondo filling the cracks and wood regions so the stencils do not bleed... unsure how touchy that aspect is but would greatly suck to peel it up and find bleeds all over through the holes in the paint surface.
Pics order-

Black stencil with lettering - the "R"
Blue MASK for re painting blue regions (but not going over good lettering)
Orange Mask for re painting Orange regions (but not going over good lettering)

Bonus_FINAL_CUTfile.jpg BLUE_STENCIL.jpg ORANGE_Mask.jpg

And the mask for the White regions

WHITE_Mask.jpg

Ok... I think I am there-

Here is a photo of a full resolution full scale (play field 1) of the wording (the most difficult part) for
"SUPER BONUS" and two of the otherwise identical words "THOUSANDS". This is the wording in correct orientation and spacing for the top of the Bonus region. These have been cut on the Silhouette Cameo- settings were S5, T5, K3 (speed, thickness, knife)- then weeded and this is what it looks like.

For those ever interested, the post above is NOT a quality stencil, I made adjustments to everything one last time to get it all perfect. In particular weeding the lettering was problematic so I altered spacing a bit to get better cut resolution and here it is...

Word_Test_CUT_FINAL.jpg

Here we go...
Stencils cut and weeded... maybe paint tomorrow...

How worried should I be about the chips and grain from the play field being in such poor condition. I was going to level with clear since its not deep.. but does anyone know about what happens here? Do I fill with bondo and sand level and just start over (avoiding text areas I am not stenciling)... or should I simply use the squeege and this material will hold fine????

I think its designed for smooth surfaces.. I will look it up and see if I can see what smooth means.

Here are the final products.

Black
Orange
White

Black_Weed_Stencil.jpg Orange_Weed_Stencil.jpg White_Weed_Stencil.jpg

and Blue

Blue_Weed_Stencil.jpg

They all look as good as the close up of the lettering. I had to change a few settings to stop it from tracing the inside and outside of the lettering which was 0.25 pt thick so it was kinda hosing them. I need it to cut the inside and outside edge of all the other black lines because I matched their thickness to the graphic... but for the letters I need it to trace ONLY... finally figure it out and got it right on the second stencil... that I had a small cut on I didn't realize would hit so I had to re-do it again... so after about 4 I had it dialed in and now can cut as many as I want... the solid color stencils are easy.. got those all on first try.

Weeding is PITA but doable- absolutely no missing pieces or rips or alignment issues or stretches... this is looking up...

First

play field has been clear coated, I was speaking to the still existing grain and divots from the clear over the paint chips. it's probably so minor as to be not a concern.... Just want this to work out.

as for cutting. I actually figured out that in my software I can take elements from the SVG grouped as I left them in illustrator and individually select them and specify to cut only the outer edge! So I got it to work as well as it possibly could and the stencils look good. I bribed my wife with a glass of wine and she is helping me color match so depending on how it goes... May have pics soon

I have a question... with a pic.

I got a pretty decent blue color match and sprayed the blue regions using the stencil shown above- and it worked out awesome. The stencil is exactly on, I did not move anything aside from simply floating and aligning the stencil and the bonus lights were perfectly aligned etc. The paint came out great and the stencil peeled off great. Then I did the yellow and the orange and reproduced something I have noticed before which leads me to the question.

If I spray and then dry with a heat gun, when I peel off the stencil I get the paint peeling up a bit and kinda stretching until it breaks along a lot of the edge, so I used a razor to cut the edges but this is not ideal. So from now on I probably will let it dry using a cool setting (not that I was getting it real hot) and really just blow air on it.

Is this indicating I am doing something wrong or going too hot or is it just what happens when you let the paint dry and then try to peel a stencil off. I think its this... cause most recommendations are that you let it dry until its just barely tack free then peel... and using a heat gun is probably taking it to far.

Second, color matching using the transparent colors is much harder to get right.

You HAVE to spray the EXACT shade of white your using as a base first, then spray your color mix, then let dry, THEN compare. Its totally useless to look at the match by painting over the top of the color you want to match...

So... I need to either remove the yellow, or go over the top again, cause its not right. The orange was worse and I peeled it as soon as the stencil came up.

Plan is- Stencils appear to be awesome, color match just needs to be run through correct work flow which I now have established (probably cause I read Vids guide and then didn't exactly read it just prior to doing... and screwed up but I learn better this way anyhow...)

As for planking etc. I agree and decided that I will be hitting it with bondo skim and then sanding to level, then hitting it with clear and then doing final stencil work. So yeah, this is taking forever, but I didn't know how to do much of this (never air brushed, never used frisket, never cut a stencil, never color matched with transparent colors) so its all adding up to a lot of learning but no damage has been done and I think its actually going to come together.

Only other Question-=

Seems like me transfer tape is holding onto the stencils a bit tight, but probably cause I am floating them and trying to pull transfer tape when its still wet so I guess I will just wait longer. Common?

Here is a pic of what happened to the blue paint after I pulled back the stencil for the yellow... ugh... I think I will hit it with a THICK coat of clear and sand using 200 Grit so the paint has something with some BITE to hold onto.

FirstTry_blockStencilsBONUS.jpg

Yeah.... I for sure learned NOT to set the paint with heat until AFTER you pull the stencil.

Thank god I clear coated this POS before I started all this painting. It makes starting over pretty painless.

I am going to pick up another quart of clear coat today, will very lightly bondo the real bad areas and hit the entire thing with a fairly heavy coat, then sand with 220 grit and try to finish this part off...

Its 50/50 at this point as to if it will look 100% when I am done, but its totally trashed now and came that way so I guess I can deal with whatever happens. I feel like I am for sure making progress- for now this is fun and I am enjoying learning. If it turns out well it will have all been worth it 10 fold.

HAHA- Stuck cow I have yet to experience but "Sandpaper! Stat!" is right in line with my experience.

I just read an interesting tidbit of knowledge... on a sign forum I found that people really suggest you use a paper transfer tape when floating a stencil with Rapid Tac (the floating solvent I am using) because it allows the rapid tac to dry, and even acts to suck up the extra into the paper. Thinking that although the Car graphics guy I got this suggestion from clearly can do this, at a very high level, using the material I have... for me, I am going to go buy a few feet of a semi sheer light tack paper transfer material. They even say that once its mostly dry you should hit the paper with the RapidTac material to throughly wet it, and then it peels off very easily- which is exactly what I need.

So-
I still need to get more clear coat-
I need to get paper transfer tape-

I need to get more than 1.5 hours at a time to work on this... I know it seems like a crap load of time- but in reality, although I did spend hours creating the stencil design and a few hours playing with and ruining a few stencils and removing paint, I really have yet to spend a decent chunk of time working, never can seem to get free anytime before about 9 pm....

Will report back on itteration 4 of this process- hopefully over the weekend. Really want this done- I am now looking forward to simple BRUSH work and fine details... wowo... I now consider that the easy part of this whole thing!

If I am lucky I can level, paint the block colors over the bondo and let it dry... probably unwise to shoot clear over acrylic for at least a day.

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...

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

And the blue.....
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I figured out I can spray 2-part clear with my air brush- I am using it to lock down coats of color to prevent stencil issues (peeling up prior layer)- I also discovered with practice that if your peeling up your prior paint layer its likely because you put it down too thick... so things are moving along. I should know exactly what I am doing once I am done with this hard part

Cutting a new black stencil now- just got a new knife and cutting pad so I can get it as good as is possible. Will spray the clear over the whole thing in a bit and probably put down black tonight or tomorrow! I cannot wait- its been a year or two since I stalled on this and its finally coming round-

After three attempts at cutting the black stencil- I finally got one perfect and managed to get it weeded and even retained the minuscule (take off your glasses and squint to find the piece on the end of a tiny tweezers) inner piece of the "A" (the triangle in the middle) in the "thousands" lettering-

First cut- missed a line that needed to be cut on both sides and had it in the layer that cut the line down the middle- got the stencil completely weeded and the last piece was of course- that line.... toss in garbage pile...

Second cut- decided I needed better resolution on super small features so played for an hour or so on test samples with cut depth speed and down pressure, got it working really really good... cut the whole thing ....... and DANG- it didn't cut fully through in a lot of places!!! Grabbed stencil, crumpled it into a ball, threw into the garbage (missed) and my wife looks up and asks if the stencil material is expensive *grin*

Third cut- changed down force by one, got a great cut and weeded perfectly, will be clear coating play field late night one evening when temp is right and then will spray black and post pic! I sincerely hope it lines up well- it did last time and I didn't change any dimensions so it *should* but four color layers later and with graphics and line art being literally a few mm wide in spots, the margin for alignment error is razor thin. Since I have locked down the colors, I will just fix any misalignment thats stupid obvious, the original games were not even close to perfectly aligned so small sins will be forgiven.

I need another Roll!

HAHA! I never thought of that, it might work...

But as for your question- I don't have the color matches on the cabinet yet- and since I repair not re-spray I will just mix mine up to match the dominant color I have on the cabinet, so I will not ever get what you need.

As for this thread- I have been working on the game, just not updating.
I ended up shooting the entire play field with another coat of 2-part clear and sanded back and am spraying the black stencil- things are looking good- should have this major part done and then will move on to fix all the damage that exists in smaller segments across the play field. I know I can do that, so happy to be over the hump. I will post a pic of the final results on redoing that big ass bonus graphic on the play field soon. That will be so nice to look at- I am not yet confident it will be absolutely perfect, but with all I have learned doing this, I know its going to be dang close, and good enough.

Ok... this has clearly become a long term project... however not all is lost.

I wet sanded the clear coat that went over the top of the solid colors on the bonus graphic and then placed the black stencil. It took me about 1.5 hour just to place the stencil and very very carefully peel that sucker up. Amazingly, its all down and looking dang good. I am certain that this will come out about as well as I could ever get it. Here is the before shots- stencil is drying, I will spray black soon.

The registration seems like it came out superb (we will know very soon) The only thing that seems like it might not be ideal is that some of the black rings around the inserts may not be quite perfectly aligned. I not almost wish I would have sanded this back to wood, but just unsure how the heck I could ever do that without ruining the rest of the mostly good play field. So- this is as good as its going to get. I am going to live with the product and be happy- I want to get the game done and play the dang thing.

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Looking at that, I now hope no orange is under the stencil around the bunny in the center... I guess I get what I get and I don't throw a fit!! Thats what I tell my kids, time to suck it up and live the dream.

Well... this is hard.

I sprayed it, took a picture, and wiped it all off. I am going to recut another stencil, weed it and try again.

As you can see, the lettering just peeled up. This is a "new" problem. I am not sure whats going wrong here. I decided one issue is the paint does not grip the underlying clear coat very well, maybe because I am sanding with too fine a grit. So I went to 220 grit, and sanded the area I will be painting, so now it will have more to grip.

In general, I think the lines are probably a little fat, but that is just how its going to be I guess. Not re-drawing this. Not super pleased, but you get what you get. Will spray this again tomorrow, maybe tonight, with a new stencil, and over the coarser sanded finish, and see what the heck happens. I think I could use some advice... anyone?