Hi all. I've been holding on to an F14 for over a year, waiting to attempt a restore until inserts are available. Well, I've I've decided not to wait any longer. Just going to do my best with what I have. Here are some pics of the playfield cleaned with ME and all inserts removed. Four pieces of factory mylar also removed.

I bought this as a player machine due to the "cobblestone insert" issue that's common to F14. I flattened them back then with a widemouth c-clamp and have been playing it as-is since then. Even though I have several plays on it, I didn't realize exactly what I had until I started pulling it apart. This thing is the cleanest pin I own by far. I talked to the op that sold it to me, and it was in the gameroom of a campgrounds but didn't know the history prior to that. There is absolutely no nicotine staining on this thing, and the inside of the cab is spotless. No dirt or grime at all. There's also almost no UV yellowing from the GI, the shooter lane looks amazing, and there is a bit of white corrosion on the lamp sockets, but it's much less than other machines of this era. I'm going to guess it was in a climate controlled environment and that it was seldom even powered up.

It's going to make a GREAT restore! Very stoked about it.

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Inserts are the only part of this machine that look like crap. They are going to get the business. Progress pics below.

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Thanks Mark. I am watching your F14 project with great interest

This game came with a set of inserts that are a mylar type, so I'm on the fence. I could just clear it with no art and put those on at the last or I could ditch those and get the waterslide type and clear those in. I really can't decide at this point. I hate the idea of wasting something I already have, but the waterslide are probably the most professional-looking.

Worked on epoxying the inserts until pretty late last night. I think I counted 16 that are glued in. These on the kickback side I hit with 91% alcohol so you can get kind of a preview of how they will look cleared.

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No, I was really lucky. The mylar came away without lifting any paint at all except a little of the lettering, which I was sanding off anyway. A few keylines may need touched up very lightly here and there, but nothing major at all.

The only true problem area that I will have to account for at some point is where somebody tried to remove the pop bumper mylar in a past life. Looks like they scraped at it with some sort of tool and took a bit of the paint. They did this on both sides. It's that dithered dot artwork, so it won't be easy to restore, but I like a challenge!

Hmm. Okay, thanks for that tip. I guess I can scan the new mylar decals and use the scans to make stencil masks with my Silhouette Cameo. Then I can spray the black, which is probably the closest thing to the original screen process. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess.

Right now I just have to worry about getting the inserts glued down. It's cold here, and Wednesday looks like my ideal window for clear coating the first layer.

So last night while waiting for epoxy to dry, I was playing around with my Silhouette Cameo. I was testing out the theory that this thing would make airbrush stencil masks that could replace the black ring around my newly-sanded inserts. This is just Dollar Tree shelf paper, and I'm not able to float it as I can with the more expensive stuff, but I'm thinking it's going to work!

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That's a ways away, though. First I have to get it sprayed. Wednesday high of 60 degrees, so looks like that's my only window. Better get prepping! Three inserts drying and four still to install, but almost done gluing.

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Umm...what just happened? Is this the problem where Vid1900 says that after your first coat of clear you'll quickly find out if somebody ever used Pledge or another silicon-based product on your machine?

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ME and 91% for the initial cleaning. Then pulled all the inserts out of it with a hairdryer, sanded them and washed them with hot water. Put them back in with clear epoxy. Used 91% to clean any epoxy that got on the pf as I worked. For the most part I didn't get any epoxy on the pf, but things happen sometimes. This morning I hit it all with a dupont sanding sponge to rough up the clear. Waited until it was the warmest part of the day (61 degrees) and moved it out to the garage paint room. Hit it with a tack cloth, then Naptha on a clean towel. Then a brand new tack cloth again. I didn't do a mist coat, just went right for it because today is the only day I can spray due to weather.

I cleared my pinbot recently no issues. Only difference is the mist coat and I wasn't gluing any inserts.

Thanks. Too cold here for this crap!!! I have it on my sun porch, and it's curing so, so SLOWLY.

The night after I sprayed it (6 hours +-) the pad of my finger under the apron left a fingerprint. Last night (30 hours) it was still soft enough that I could see a mark from a fingernail pressed lightly.

Today it seems pretty hard and doesn't smell, so I think tonight I will sand. 100 grit, ha, not sure about that BadBrad. But maybe 320 and I could sand and not risk heart attack. I have a lot of sanding ahead of me, but my goal is to sand flat. I agree even the low spots have some clear, so I agree it will be fine eventually.

SDF - I am on the fence about filling the low spots first or sanding first. Found a local shop that sells Shopline 660 clear coat and for $40 I could be up and running and have product to fill these low spots. But should I do that or sand first, can't decide.

Thanks for comments. Stay tuned.

Dan

Thanks, Vid!

Hello all. Sanded with 400 yesterday morning as Vid1900 advised. I was pretty aggressive with it, using the shiny low spots as a guide to tell me how close I was to hitting the original surface. But I didn't go crazy and by no means tried to sand it flat. I just got close and left the low spots. Then I used a 3m 800 sanding sponge and an old piece of 800 and tried to work with my fingers into any shiny spot until there were no shiny spots. Next I put two heaters in my spray room and brought the temp up to 65 degrees (it was 40 outside). Then I sprayed it very wet. Then I really cranked up the heaters, getting the room as high as 85 degrees!

The result is much improved! I think I can sand this flat and then start with my touchups. A few spots that are still low, but I'm happy with my progress.

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Hi guys. Well, I got busy with 400 grit again and removed a TON of clear. Then I sanded those scratches out with the 800, to see what was what. This left me closer to totally flat, but there were still a number of shiny spots. Plus it turns out my inserts weren't as level as I'd hoped and a few were down. On the chevrons it was tough not to end up with one corner down as about half of them were down somewhere.

So... I made the decision to sand the shiny spots again using my finger and a torn off corner of old 800 grit. This is the technique Vid1900 recommended above at a previous step. I got as much of the shiny off as I could, and went to town with the Walgreens medicine dropper.

Since I'm using a rattle can, I had to spray the can into a jelly jar. Then I sucked it up into the syringe. I think it worked pretty well. We will see when I go to sand, I guess. I'm sure I'll still have at least a couple low spots but hopefully they are close enough I can start on the touchups soon.

Dan

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Well, this whole thing is a learning process. When I start doing my beloved Star Wars then the s_ gets real. Anyway, difficult for me to tell if I'm a making it better or worse sometimes. I sanded off where I flooded the low spots with clear. Including the couple "whoops" spots where the clear dropped out without my wanting it to. Still a few low spots but much fewer in number. I think I'd like to spray another wet coat on this, sand that 800, THEN I want to get to my playfield touchups.

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Geez, It's cold here. I used space heaters to get 70 degrees in the sprayroom and sprayed again. It's still not perfect, but once I sand it will be good enough to start the playfield touchups. You are starting to see that mirror shine that SprayMax will give you once you're spraying wet over an already-flat surface. The verdict is still out on this stuff, to be honest. It's a love-hate at this point. Looks good, obviously, but it's not without its issues.

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https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/rec.games.pinball/Ca2mbcJ1nUg

I designed it pre-pinside. This link work? I now use two pieces of conduit to stablize the triangles instread of threaded rod.

And 2 pac is two-part auto clearcoat.

Dan

You have a really love a system 11 to own it at my house. Due to a narrow door at the basement landing, I have to remove the head to get one down there. Here's the head ready to be removed

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and the harness in the bottom of the cab.

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Hi guys. thought I would give a little update on a process I am just beginning. I'm going to be painting the keylines with my airbrush per Vid1900's guide. I want to make the lines as perfect as possible and will be using a silhouette cameo to cut masks.

First step is scan the playfield, then in inkscape trace the keylines. I use 1 pixel stroke and mark it pink so it's easy to see. I set the scan's opacity low in this pic so you can see my trace.

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Next in the silhouette software I import the SVG and add a box around each shape. I don't have this process down 100% yet, admittedly. Sometimes when I scan I put a steel rule on the playfield for reference so I can make sure I keep the correct scale. For this scan, I just measured the height to the nearest mm of the chevron and scaled the chevron on the screen to the same, allowing the other shapes to be scaled with it.

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Once I have my shape, I'm ready to test it out on the playfield. I will often use contact paper from the Dollar Tree, but today I'm feeling like using the good stuff. This is OraMask Stencil Film 813. It's great stuff. Has a really nice thick release backing, cuts like a dream.
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Here is the shape after a small amount of weeding. I use a Harbor Freight dental pick for this step. Note that I have two variations of keyline thickness. The outside is the same, as that's the shape of the actual insert, but the thickness of the keyline, I'm on testing variations.

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Once the material is weeded, I put it on a release tape. I use Clear Choice AT60n.

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And here are the two insert masks applied. The first one I messed up and got it crooked. I have not attempted to float this material using liquid, but if I keep messing up when I attempt to line these up, that may become a necessary step.
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Last pic is a circle I cut. I didn't scan the playfield for this, just measured.
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Hi. Tonight I decided I would try to make some progress and have something to show for all my efforts. I loaded up the Oramask 813, cut my inserts, started to put them on the playfield, etc. But there was something I didn't like about this stuff. It's too tacky for my tastes. You have to pretty much destroy it to get if off the playfield. Cuts great, but there's always some adhesive film left over after I'm done scraping it away in a big blue ball of goo...

What to do?

I decided to try my luck with the Dollar Tree contact paper instead. My initial tests have been good, and I figure it can't hurt to try it. Airbrush paint comes off if needed.

The results? Well, it cuts nice. Here are a couple pics. Sorry the color is ugly, but it's a dollar...

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Next I started spraying it black.
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Here are after 3-4 thin coats. Showing the light through it the best I can. You can see my inserts need to be cut bigger, but the process itself shows some promise.

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Thanks Silhouette Cameo. Thanks Dollar Tree.

Note: When I pulled the vinyl off the playfield, I saw the remnants of adhesive. Sigh. Maybe the Oramask set down on a linty towel to be less adhesive will do the trick.

So before calling it a night I wanted to try a slightly thicker version of the chevron, and I wanted to spray thicker paint to make it more opaque. There's a feature in the Cameo software that allows you to "offset" a shape with another identical but bigger or smaller shape. Perfect for keylines, and perfect for making the Chevron just a tad bigger. Once cut, I applied them as evenly as I could and sprayed them. This time I tested with an led flashlight and sprayed until I could see no light through the lettering. I'm pretty pleased with the result now, especially compared to the earlier effort.

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Not everyone is going to love this idea, but I'm thinking of changing fonts on the inserts to be more "military." The font on there now is just a bold Helvetica / Arial, which is fine but I'm kind of indifferent to it. Here's where I'm leaning.

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Will just need to see how it mixes with the fonts on the playfield and plastics that I won't be changing. I may throw together a mock-up from my scans.

Did you use a Cameo to cut those? Those look amazing! There's another guy doing a Taxi that needs to see these results! I'll PM him to check it out. Thanks for posting.

Dan

Thanks Mark. That one does look great for the word "Tomcat" but the X and K are wonky IMO. Strange how when you see it in a specific context it isn't what you expect.

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Ok, wow and super wow. I bought my cameo on a leap of faith, hoping I could use it for making at least a limited number of stencils. I held my breath the entire time doing keylines and large fonts. Please work, please work, please work, I kept thinking. I'm floored that you've already been able to mask large areas with that kind of detail! Very impressive.

Dan

Thanks, that's very helpful info about the different qualities of cutters. I'm new to this and kind of ignorant about a lot of it. This little guy is a champ for doing these basic shapes, so I'll keep putting it through the paces.

I wiped off the paint from attempt #1 and then prepped the masks for attempt #2, which will likely get sprayed late tonight. I did decide to change the font and sizes from the stock/original machine, but not very dramatically. These letters are just the tiniest bit bigger than how the machine shipped.

The "Stencil" font was tempting, but I chickened out. More later.

Dan

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A Cameo is this tool, which I'm not the first pinballer to use by any means for this type of work, but I've been trying to document its successes and limitations, etc.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/silhouette-cameo-pinball-restorers-club

That's kind of an interesting discussion in my case. Normally anything scanned off of Williams IP can be used for a personal restore job but not shared with others. In my case, I'm altering the original and my files represent something different than what Williams used. My keylines are fatter, my font is different. In cases like these it's the differences that make it okay to share, like a font that's similar to a commercial font but has some differences.

In any case, we're talking about a very small subset of folks who would ever want to do such a thing. Better handled off a public forum to be safe.

I'll use decals on the very fine writing on the inserts, but I don't love the idea of using decals for the keylines surrounding the inserts. For that airbrush paint will do a much better job IMO. True, I could just airbrush the keylines and decal all the numbers, but the way I look at it there's really no extra effort to airbrush these bigger numbers, and so far they are turning out great. This way I won't have to worry that the keylines are more opaque than the numbers or vice versa.

Dan

Well, I already cut those chevrons on contact paper, but I decided to give the expensive Oracut 813 masking vinyl another try. Thanks to Pinsider Lonzo for answering a few questions I had about the stuff.

Here's a pic of an insert cut and masked.

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I used Dollar Tree wrapping paper and green painter's tape and sprayed several coats of black.

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I liked the result. I thought these pics were pretty cool before the insides are pulled off. F-14 Blackout edition.

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Yes, thanks for your PM. I think I'm back to being a fan of the Oramask. The Dollar Tree stuff certainly works, but I worry about it leaving a residue since it's untested for this application. Your advice to remove it corner-to-corner seems to be the key. Once it's down it's kind of difficult to get a corner up, which I think was my problem. I used a razor blade very carefully to get enough that I could grab it, then it comes up great and no residue at all. If you pick at it with your fingernail like a doofus and start making a mess of it, things don't go as well...

Hey Andy, no see posts 37 and 38. You use a clear "transfer tape" to get the mask off the release paper, so it keeps the gaps just fine.

I washed them with super hot water until that gooey glue turned white and I picked it all off. I did sand, but didn't find any primer so skipped the step. If I had the primer, I'd have used it, just didn't have it.

Don't go finer. I either used 400 or 220. I think 220, but now of course I can't recall. I had some sandpaper from a sampler pack from this tool shop called Harbor Freight, which sells the cheapest Chinese crap tools you can imagine but at such rock bottom prices I can never resist. I got this sandpaper home and HATED it in every way imaginable. It was good enough for inserts, though!

Well it's been 4 long months waiting for a nice day, but today we got it. 80 degrees!

A couple weeks back I airbrushed all the black keylines that I'd stenciled with my Cameo. I am doing the keylines only and not lettering. I will do traditional decal for those letters and numbers. Then today I took off from work and sprayed 3 thin coats about 20 mins apart to lock down the keylines. Next I will lightly sand to give the next clear some tooth, get my decals done, then clear again.

These pics are taken outside. Very happy with the progress.

Dan

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8 months since I touched this bad boy, 1 year since I started, but time to finish it!!!

Last thing I did was clear the keylines. It was a fairly thin and "dusty" coat. So today I sanded that coat lightly at 500 grit. Then I sanded with my finger all the places that are getting text decals. Used 1500 for that.

Decals are next!

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