Picked up a Dracula playfield as a restoration project. Ideally I’d like to find a junk machine to restore to put it in but for the time being it’s just a playfield project to keep me busy now that my DUMPSTER FIREpower project is complete.

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Here are some close ups to show what I’m working with. Not much wear really but there is significant planking. This will give me a lot of practice with the airbrush.

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Here’s my list of what I want to do before I start painting.

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First thing is to get the Mylar off of the pop bumper area and the in lanes where the ramps drop.

Typical process, froze it with canned air and it all peeled up with no issue.

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I found that rubbing the flour into glue then pouring 91 percent alcohol on afterward then putting on more flour after about a minute works great. The glue rubbed right off. Basically came up like that rubber glue credit card companies use to stick a new card to the letter they send you.

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Found a few loose inserts. Pop them out and reset them although I forgot to take pics of all the work. I at least got one of them. Oooops

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A small victim of the planking was the corner of the R insert.

Little glue and a clamp got it back in business.

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The shooter lane was pretty dirty. I sanded a significant amount of it to the point of it starting to change its shape. So I’m going to paint the V shape in the wood that straddles the lane a slightly browner tan to hide the filth that I can’t sand out.

More to come on that.

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This is going to be a doozy.
The wood feels like a sponge under this planking in the right orbit.
A lot of this is going to need to be removed and filled with epoxy wood then leveled and repainted. I’m open to suggestions on this one. The top layer here can be pushed down about a 1/4 inch.

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Initially I was thinking about this but if I peel back the pieces there’s a hole. It’s more like an air pocket really.

I’m going to create a template for the blood spatter so I can repaint it then I’ll start dissecting that area and show what’s going on. I’ll post that progress in the next few days.

Oh I know! I first played one in a dark bar and it had blue LEDs. First time I saw one in a lit room and regular bulbs I felt lost. I remember asking my wife “Was this chick in the red dress always there?!!!” Haha

Dialed in what colors I’ll be using to repaint almost all of this playfield. Still trying to dial in a skin tone and the orange. Will probably need to do some mixing. And some of these Americanas will need a good mix of airbrush thinner.

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Started some basic prep by wet sanding the entire playfield with 600 grit until I start seeing the original clear coat slurry on the paper. Trying to get every single bit of gloss hit so the new clear coat has something to grab in the areas that I don’t paint.

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Starting chiseling out the rotten wood in the right orbit. Good lord it literally just turned to saw dust once I peeled back the top layer.

I put the screw driver in to get some scale of how deep it went.

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Ended up putting a nice patch of epoxy wood in the void and I’ll sand that level tomorrow.

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I’m at a standstill for a while. I can’t seem to airbrush for more than 30 seconds an hour because of trying to get paint to come out of 3 different brushes every time I attempt to paint. I just get frustrated and give up. Then spend 2 pissed off hours cleaning up my brushes that I used for 1 minute.
So I watch a shit ton of YouTube videos on airbrushing and add a ton of reducer to my paint and it’s pointless. Nothing works, I probably have a ton of money in the wrong equipment, wrong paint, wrong everything. Fuck it
I’ve been working on a xenon project in the meantime.