Recently finished painting my Fireball, using Rustoleum and stencils from Pinball Pimp.

This is the paint I used, plus Royal Blue for the primary base coat. It has a nice sheen to it, but am interested in protecting the paint from nicks caused by vacuum cleaner hoses (and such) in the hands of grand-kids

Is there a clear out there that is "proven" to work well with Rustoleum enamels? I plan on letting the paint cure until, at least, April of next year.

paint (resized).jpg

For the blue, it took not quite three cans. I probably could have put some of a fourth on it, but decided not to.

The yellow and red, between 1-2 cans each. With the yellow, I had to avoid getting overzealous, with the contrast between the yellow on a white stencil and the yellow on Royal Blue.

None of my stencils pulled up paint, not even a speck. I started with the backbox, and pulled them fairly soon after painting. Got some bleed when I did that. As we progressed through each stencil, I started leaving them on longer after painting. By the end of the process, ten stencils altogether, I was leaving them on for several hours after painting. For me, it cut down on the bleed over. For some reason, I had the most problems with yellow. Don't know why, that's just how it worked out.

As Stretch7 said, depends on how bad the area is, and also how much area it covers. Use frisket, or whatever you prefer, mask it off really good, prep it and re-touch. It's tedious, but unless it's really messed up, might be overkill to redo the whole thing, not to mention the cost of a new set of stencils.

If it was my machine, I would leave the serial numbers. Even with our repainting of Fireball recently, I didn't repair the wood, for instance, some really worn out spots on the front of the backbox below the back glass. They just got worn down from fifty years of use. Cleaned em up as best I could, and repainted. We kind of like the used look, character marks over a long life I guess

Now, wood rot, or severe wood damage, that's a different story.

But that's just our/my preference. Mileage definitely will vary.

Deleenhe, how did you avoid brush strokes. I would rather brush paint when I can, especially small areas, but I have never been able to get that smooth look. I know it's possible, but I do believe that technique was not included in my talent pool