Yep, that Metallica can be a real drain monster. And yeah, good putting a face to the name. After you left, the other tables didn't treat me any kinder either. Had to come home and play Pinball Arcade just to make myself feel better, since I can kill it on there!

_{Post edited by shutyertrap : double post, so changed it to a response}

Question about flipper rebuild on this table...

I was placing an order today with Pinball Resource, and asked about the flipper kit. My coil stop is part of the base plate, not screwed in. The rebuild kit has the screw in coil stop. Steve said he has the base plates that allow for this, but doesn't know if Firepower has enough space for it or not. Anyone know more? I'm not yet ready to do the flippers yet (no where close!), but figured it's a valid question.

So I ordered up my 3/4" white inserts, all my lane guides (since mine were either cracked or the wrong color), star roll overs, flipper bats w/ rubber, leg bolts, and leg levelers (mine are nasty and one was stripped).

Meanwhile, my neighbor has a HVLP spray gun, regulator, and a compressor. I don't even own a bike pump! He's never cleared anything either, but was thinking of eventually doing some guitars. So the option of doing it at home instead of finding an auto paint shop to do it is very much on the table. I need to check price of a pint of clear vs. what the auto places might charge. Summer here in SoCal, so temp is perfect for dry time. Once I get my inserts and put them back in, I'll have to make a decision on clearing it myself or not.

As I'm simply waiting on parts, not much for me to do to the playfield. This means I start looking for things to do, just to make any kind of progress. Oh sure, I could clean the inside of the cabinet, clean up the plunger, dust out the head, or even give some attention to the coin door.

Nope, I decide what I'm calling 'the grill' needs to be dealt with.

On Firepower and other tables of this Williams era, there's the cabinet body, the cabinet head, and this little section in between. The neck? Anyways, there's this piece of cheese plate steel, and every time I have seen one, they're always the same. Nasty untouched dirty to this side of rusting pieces of metal. I've got the same stuff covering the speaker and vent holes in the cabinet body. I honestly would be surprised if they ever looked anything but like what I've seen.

Still, it bugs me. I'm gonna wanna be seeing everything else on the table somewhat shiny, so why not this? Now I see threads where guys are powder coating and chroming metal, but I'm broke. If it's the difference between spending money and doing it the hard way...I'm trying the hard way. On top of that, I don't exactly have the proper tools for the job. Like any job. I have a set of sockets and a sander. That's pretty much the extent of the tools in my garage!

Fortunately, I have friends, neighbors, and my father who have a wealth of tools I can borrow. Still doesn't mean I have the right tools, just a better selection than my own. Anyways, I took the plate to my dad's place, and threw it against the wire wheel of his grinder. Nothin' doing. He whipped out his hand sander and some 250 grit paper, now we started to get somewhere. However, it was very slow going and not much to show. Lotta peaks and valleys. So we tried using a rougher grit paper on a piece of 1X, and that at least took down much of the rough look, but still not enough. Finally we took a pumice stone tip on a Dremel, and that had the effect of knocking all the nastiness away while leaving it's own mark on the metal. So back to the hand sander, and it did the job of polishing it up nice.

Yes, I'm aware that instead of spending a solid 2 hours doing this, I should have been using a buffing wheel, but didn't have one, so shut it.

The kicker is, we finished one side (the easy side) when it donned on me, we just polished the back side. D'oh! I went back to my place with the Dremel, and proceeded to repeat the process on the other side. End result is, now I have a shiny grill. That absolutely no one is going to notice once the head is back on. No one but me that is. Maybe I should put some lights behind it.

Those parts can't get here soon enough!

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Need more grill porn? (careful how you read that!)

Some shots taken outside to show off the ugly and the shine.

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Oh, oh, OH! What's in the box???

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...Parts from Pinball Resource! Thanks Steve.

Leg bolts
Leg levelers
Leg bracket
Finned post
Star roll overs
Flipper bats
Flipper rubber
Lane guides
3/4" white inserts

Awaiting another order from Bay Area Amusements that will have my new blue inserts. Then I can get back to the task at hand of the playfield now needing a base of clear.

So I need to rough up the tops of the inserts a bit for the clear to bite, correct Vid1900?

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My other shipment came in today from Bay Area Amusements...

Blue flat bottom inserts
Metal pop bumper yoke
Fiber pop bumper yoke

Now I'm gonna get to sanding on all the inserts. Think I'll practice on the one's that aren't going back on the table first.

I bought the pop bumper yokes because as was pointed out in Vid's guide, the metal ones were indeed broken. No idea if I needed the fiber ones or not, but they were cheap so what the hell.

I also took apart my plunger and cleaned it up real nice. Thing's got some spring to it now! I also polished out all the dirt and grime that were on the front plate. Amazing how lost you can get with time doing little minor things like that.

Man, look at how white those whites are! If I knew that I'd be keeping this machine, I'd probably splurge too. Simple truth is, this is my first pin and it wasn't one I had even considered. Just so happened the timing of me having money and this becoming available for the exact amount on the very same day, well I impulse bought!

Once I get it playing the way I know it should, and cleaned up to a level I'm happy with, then we'll see if it's a keeper for me or not. My intention originally was for this to be a stepping stone into a table I actually always have wanted. That might be a total pipe dream. And as others have pointed out to me, it can be difficult to part with the first machine you put some TLC into. All I know is, for the month I had it operational and even now with it in pieces, I'm having fun!

In other news...thought I was gonna be able to pick up the correct sound and speech board for cheap on eBay. Auction just ended. With 30 seconds to go, it was 12 bucks. I threw in a top bid of $30. Immediately outbid, and with 15 seconds left it shot up to $49. With $23 shipping costs and the fact that it was untested and unknown for what System 6/7 game intended, I'm good. Just gotta keep looking. The brand new option is always on the table, but as this is the last piece to the puzzle I'll be needing, I'll just keep looking.

Just a quick update...

Been crazy busy with work and family stuff, so I've done all of nothing for a month solid. Should be back on this in a week or two, fingers crossed.

Okay, finally something to show again!

Inserts are all reinstalled on the play field once again. I've never used epoxy myself before, so I was very tentative. I started up on the top with 2 inserts, used an acid brush like Vid recommended, and then pushed down the insert with a small piece of Masonite board so it'd go in flush. I let it set, which took only 5 minutes, and all seemed well. I then let it cure for 24 hours just to be completely positive about the final result. The next day all was well, so I moved forward with the left half of the table.

I was doing 3-4 inserts at a time, only mixing a small amount of epoxy each time. I had a few inserts that wanted to sink lower than the table, so I made sure to put the Masonite flush and push back up from the bottom before they set. By the time I got to the 6 orange arrow inserts, I felt like I had the hang of things. I mixed up a larger batch of epoxy, and went about doing all six at once. By the time I got to the last 2, I noticed the epoxy was starting to get stringy on the brush, so obviously I'd reached the limit of how many I could do in a certain amount of time. I pushed flush all the inserts, called it a day.

Well, the next day I noticed the last arrow was raised slightly. Dammit. Near the tip, it probably is up by 1/32 of an inch, just enough to alter the course of a pinball (I checked with a slow roller!). Obviously with the epoxy totally cured, there's no way to push it back down. I don't know if this happened because of me trying to do too many at one time, since it was the last to go in, or what. But there it is.

As I installed the rest of the inserts, I payed real close attention during the 5 minute set time. I had 2 more that tried to rise, but I was able to keep 'em flush by reapplying pressure until they set completely. The white inserts down the middle, they're flush, but you can feel edges a touch due to the paint being worn to the wood directly surrounding them. I should think that once I put down clear coat and repaint the area, all will be fine.

My question is, what to do about that arrow insert? You can see by the pics, this is where the really bad touch-up paint job was done, so it's not like it's a perfectly flat surface currently surrounding it. I'm worried that if I try sanding it on the table, I'll wind up just sanding more paint than insert. Should I try and wood bondo it flush? Should I just go ahead and get 1 layer of clear on it and deal with it after? A little guidance please!!

The three pics of the insert are taken at extreme closeup from all 3 sides. The insert next to it that you can see in one of the pics also looks raised a bit, but it's barely perceptible to the touch.

Thanks for your input guys. Once I deal with the insert, it's on to putting that first coat of automotive clear on the table. Then the real fun starts...painting.

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Don't look now, but after over 3 years, there's activity on my Firepower again! I can hear the fanfare now.

So I was all hot to trot to do a playfield restoration, things were moving along fine and I was posting progress. And then I lost my nerve. Having zero experience with clear coating, this being my first and only pin, and generally not knowing what exactly I was gonna do even after putting on clear, combined these had the effect of stopping me in my tracks. The playfield sat in my garage, the head was separated from the cabinet, and stuff kinda piled up around it all. Ultimately it became out of sight, out of mind. I had just recently joined a local league too, and let's just say when you see pristine machines restored to better than new, it steals one's thunder.

Flash forward 3 1/2 years, to find my wife buying me an Eight Ball Deluxe in March. A spot was cleared in the garage next to the shell of my Firepower, and once again I had a working pin. Funny thing, it made me really want to get Firepower finally moving forward in some way. I reattached the head to the cabinet, I took a look at where things stood with prepping the playfield for clear, and I looked at all my parts and realized I haven't the foggiest idea how to put the thing back together! Meh, easily resolved issues as there's guys in my pinball league who can offer advice. My big question though was, should I continue down the clear coat path?

I wound up asking some guys in my pin league if they'd ever cleared anything personally, not sent it out. Turns out one of the guys did, and it also happens that he has done a truly spectacular restoration of Firepower. He eased my mind about doing the clear, but did throw one monkey wrench into matters. Do myself a favor and take off the wire harness underneath. Fear in my eyes, he said don't worry too much, it's not as bad as I think. So I thought about it for a couple of days, and started liking the idea. After all, it solves some of the prep work questions I was hung up on, plus it opens the door for me possibly cutting the table for drop target mod. A few more days of thought, and I came to the conclusion that I'm already in the weeds as it is, no harm in going farther! After all, it's not like things were going forward the way the table sits now.

And so it begins anew. Today I worked on my Firepower for the first time in a very very long time. I put my fear behind me, unscrewed the entire underside. I pulled over 130 staples out, which was a real load of laughs, lemme tell ya.

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Finally I went truly point of no return and transferred the entire thing to some cardboard. Which had the effect of making me wonder if I've made a terrible, terrible mistake! It's such a jumbled mess, and though I took a bunch of photos, I'm legitimately concerned I'll get everything screwed back in properly.

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Here's the thing, that's now a concern for another day. I'm now only focusing on getting the clear done, and I feel good about it at the moment. I've got a little more prep work to do, I'll probably now repaint the bottom with a fresh coat of grey, and I'll look into what I need to do for adding drop targets. Once it's cleared, my plan is to do some basic touch up painting, reapply all the insert markings, and then just probably leave the table looking worn and old. Like when car guys clear coat an old car which has that patina that only age can make.

Wish me luck. Figure if the WGA writers do go on strike, I'll have plenty of time to work on it! And if they don't, my show doesn't start back up till end of summer anyways.

Funny you should mention that as I just painted today, using a foam roller! Got the paint from the castoff pile at Lowes for $1.25. It's a lighter grey, but who really cares?

Before:

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Midway:

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After:

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Had no drips whatsoever, took all of 5 minutes to do. I taped over the inspection sticker and tilt switch sticker because for some reason I felt like preserving them.

I wood filled a couple of holes on the front where someone had stripped out a piece and drilled new right next to it. I'll have to just re drill when I populate again, lined up with the actual pieces. That seems a long ways away though!

Next step I guess is buying the safety equipment and seeing how long my 8 gallon air compressor can spray for using water through the gun on a test piece. If not, I'll have to see about renting a larger one since I don't think any of my neighbors have the 35 gallon compressor someone recommended I use!

Lucky me, a Harbor Freight just opened (like literally) a mile from my house. Was gonna borrow my neighbor's spray gun, but at 66% off I bought my own. Now I won't feel bad if I ruin it somehow. Respirator, moisture trap, and eye protection rounded things out. Just need to pick up some lacquer thinner so I'll be ready to clean the gun.

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I'm really trying to push myself forward before chickening out. My goal is to spray clear some time next week. 2 coats, then start basic touch up painting and the inserts. Not sure if I wanna go the decal route or paint them myself. Decision for another day.

I'm thinking I should cut out the 2 slots at the standup targets in case I want to do the drop mod later. Anyone got dimensions for the cut?

Hehe, yeah I'm not eyeballin' nothing! Other than that it's centered

It ain't pretty, but I don't really care! Cut the holes for being able to do drop targets should I decide to later.

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I'm hoping to do some clear coating tomorrow, which honestly has been the biggest factor in me not working in this table for all this time. I'm just going guns blazing now before I have time to think. Thus removing the wiring harness, and now cutting the slots. If I can get the first layers if clear on without incident, it'll be s huge win. Fingers crossed!

Took a look at your thread...wow. I so appreciate your eye for detail when it comes to your labeling and how clean your boards are! I also wish my playfield looked half as good as either of yours. Everyone that sees it in person keeps asking why I don't just buy a CPR replacement, and my initial thought is "because I'm not made of money". Plus I paid $500 for the entire thing. Truth be told, this game is not necessarily a keeper for me, as the only reason I bought it 4 years ago was because it was being sold for exactly the amount of money I had. I just wanted to finally own a pinball machine, and voila, here was one I could afford and it had a good game pedigree. That's why my attitude now is, I can't make it any worse than it already was. I'll make (and have made) the mistakes of a rookie on it, but for as little cost as I can possibly manage. I'll be happy just to see it running again and playing nice, looks be damned. Like a rat rod pinball! Just make it fun. Who knows, maybe then I'll fall in love with the thing.

Let's get up to date with the goings on this week. If you follow vid's playfield restoration page, you've seen most of this. I just like having it all in one place! This was the week I was finally going to shoot clear coat. Not only have I never done this before, but I've never sprayed paint through a gun period. This had been a big mental hang up for me, but talking with Tim Moyers in my pinball league really set my mind at ease. His first piece of advice was to remove the wire harness. Pain in the butt it might be, he said I'd thank him later. His second piece of advice was, no matter how bad I shoot the clear, you can always either shoot another layer; it's correctable. Well then, let's do this!

I started off by really giving the surface a scrub down with Naptha. This wasn't the first time I did this, but the last time was before I abandoned the project way back when. It looked a little something like this...

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To the touch I could very much feel the paint, the plastic of the inserts, the edges of where paint had warn off to wood. It felt smooth enough to me, and I figured clear would just hide and correct the imperfections. Spoiler alert, it makes them worse!

I picked up an HVLP spray gun for $30 at Harbor Freight, one with an air gauge at the gun. I also attached a moisture filter to it. My compressor is only a 2HP 8 gallon tank, so that had me worried a bit. The 2PAC I had bought was from Legacy Finishes and needed to be shot at a psi of 30-40. I set up a pop up tent, hung furniture pads on the sides while allowing space for air flow without worrying about wind or dust.

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I mixed up probably around 5 oz, not knowing how much I'd actually need. For the record, waaaayyyy too much! Put on my mask, goggles, nitrile gloves, took a calming breath, and pulled the trigger. Only no clear came out, only air. This caused a mild panic! Did I not have enough psi to shoot the clear? Did I not have the gun set up properly? Nope, turns out I just needed to pull the trigger ALL the way back. Idiot. I laid down my first coat and immediately saw something wasn't right. It looked like the clear was bubbling right where all the paint issues were, dead center playfield.

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Did I lay too thin a coat? Was it not adhering to the flaking paint? In my head I just kept hearing Tim say, "it's okay, just shoot another coat". So I set my timer to let this coat set. 20 minutes later, time to spray more. I really laid it on, and while it did look better, the center area still had the same problem.

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If I got down low to the edge and looked, it looked really smooth.

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I didn't panic, figured many others have had similar issue, just chalk it up to being a rookie. Onto this site I go, asking for vid's advice. His assessment was that someone had used a silicon based wax and some point and it had saturated into the wood, causing the clear to fisheye. He said to bust out the 400 grit sand paper (wet sanded) and smooth those things down. Attack them I did, and that's when I noticed what the real culprit was. There were a ton of these little divets, whether from ball impact or flaked away paint or something else, I don't know. It looked like Edward James Olmos' face.

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Vid commented that I had made a nice recovery, but needed to fill all those indentations with clear using something like an eye dropper. Okay. First I needed to scuff them so the clear would have something to grab. What I read elsewhere in his thread was the fact that because of surface tension, clear coat doesn't fill in holes so much as make rings around them. That was the cause of the 'bubbling', clear not filling in. Out came the steal wool and scuff away I did. I had this children's medicine syringe (for lack of a better term) that'd work perfect for filling in the pock marks. So the next day I mixed up the smallest batch my mixing cup had lines for. Guess what? Waaaayyyy too much! In the end I only needed 3/4 of what was in the syringe. Yeah, a little clear goes a long way. I also filled in around all the inserts, in the bare wood spots, atop the shooter lane. Essentially if I saw a depression, I put clear on it.

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Unfortunately I put maybe a little too much on. Once it set, I rubbed my hand over it and it felt like a bumpy mess. Waited 6 hours before sanding, once again using 400 grit. Only problem was, it didn't seem to be doing anything. Or not nearly enough. Soon I had thrashed that paper, but I had no more. I did have some 240 grit dry paper. Hmmmm...

I tried it out at the top, and boy howdy did it attack the bumps! Made a white powdery mess too. Now I understood why Tim said to remove the wiring harness. Even if I had filled all the holes in the table with foam ear plugs, or taped over them all, that fine powder would find a way under. And I was about to make a lot of it. Keeping my strokes going up and down the table, I clouded the crap out of it. I made sure there wasn't a bump to be found, and probably took most of the clear coat off in doing so. I know for a fact I did over the orange inserts, as soon the white powder took on a red tint. I had been scared of sanding when it was just paint, but the clear coat protected it and allowed me to flatten some of the inserts that had raised a touch too high when I first put them in.

The result? Well if you wanna be shiny, first you have to be dull!

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I've never felt this playfield be so smooth. Although I can feel an imperfection here and there, it's night and day to what it was 2 days earlier, and wildly different compared to that first day I picked up the machine with it's completely botched and blotchy touch up paint job. The ultimate test though, was to put a ball on it. I gave it just an ever so slight push, and no matter where I did it, the ball never changed paths but just rolled straight. Victory! The whole impetus for me even wanting to do clear was because the ball would slow roll over an insert and divert 45 degrees. Or jump if it was a fast moving ball, probably what caused all the little divets.

So what's next? I'm waiting on a response from vid to see if I need to do another sanding pass using a finer grit to knock down some of the clouding. I wet wiped the table to remove excess white powder, and in that moment it looks good. The inserts show a little marking, which leads me to believe I probably should. After that, I believe it's time to lay some frisket down to mask where I plan on airbrushing paint on. I'm going over to a buddy of mine's on Tuesday to get some new clear plastics cut for my EBD machine, but he's also got a permanent airbrushing station set up. That saves me the hassle and cost of buying my own, plus he actually knows how to use the thing!

The biggest issue I face with painting is not rushing it. I know me. I'll take my time doing a little area, and then go too fast on everywhere else. I already imagine the cutting of the frisket is going to take the most time, so I have to allow for it. I can't give myself a time frame as I just don't know. Who knows, maybe my buddy will take an interest and wanna help. That'd be sweet as I know diddly about mixing colors either!

Until next time...

Okay, so it's been a few weeks but I have been busy on Firepower! In order to do the touch-up painting I wanted to, I first had to mask off everything with Frisket. That's the clear low tack film Vid recommends, and then you cut along what you want to expose for paint with an X-acto knife. Simple, right? Yes and no, depending on how many mistakes you make along the way!

I decided there were two colors I'd deal with right off the bat, the white areas and red. The red lasers were a no brainer as that's where the majority of botched touch-up work had been done before. Also, big straight lines, so easy to mask and cut. The white areas, now faded yellow, I hesitated over. My friend who's airbrush setup I was going to be using, put scary thoughts into my head about how I'd never be able to get the curves right without a guide, that there was no way I'd be able to cut the pinstripes since they're so thin, and just forget about the numbers and lettering completely. So I tested it all out by putting some Frisket over a Little Caesars pizza box and cutting around letters and curves. After I pulled off the masking I discovered there was nothing to it, you just gotta take your time.

Turns out, a lot of time!

I started out with the white of the slingshots. I used just enough Frisket to mask each, not wanting to be wasteful. Mistake #1. I had a full roll of the stuff, should have just covered the entire playfield in two strips and saved myself ample hassle both in the cutting stage and the painting stage. Anyway, it wasn't until after I covered the red lasers that I did just that over the top half remaining. The big shapes were fairly easy to cut around, I was using a clear architect triangle to guide along the straight edges and then carefully free handing curves. I tried doing this for outlane "3000 w/ lit" and "Shield On w/ Lit". Mistake #2. The letters and numbers are not exactly precise, nor uniformly straight. Also, the more times you pick up the blade, the more likely to not have connected two cuts together. As a result, they might be a little more shaky than all the other letters and numbers which I free handed too. By the time I got to the pinstriping, I was in complete free hand mode, not even using the straight edge.

I also got bold and decided to cut the white of the flames around the pop bumbers.

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Lemme tell you, those were tricky! Sharp blade is a must, but so is proper lighting. I borrowed my wife's Ott-Lite so I could constantly shift it to avoid the shadow of my hand or so I could catch the glint of the cut edge. Once I cut around the area soon to be white, I would pull off the Frisket and leave it exposed for paint.

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Hard to tell (unless you feel it or aim the Ott-Lite just right) but the flames, pinstripe, and large spot are all ready for paint. I worked a little each day, until either my eyes or hands couldn't take anymore. Took me about 2 weeks to do off and on. So today I took it over to my friends for paint.

Remember mistake #2, well now I had to put down additional masking to make up for any exposed spots. At first this wasn't going to be too much of an issue according to my friend.

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Little did we know the problems the Creatix paint was about to cause. See my friend does a lot of airbrushing of fine detail on table top gaming models. He shoots at 15 psi, and can really do fine detail work. The Creatix paint Vid had recommended is THICK. It wants to be shot at 50 psi. My friend had a hard time wrapping his head around this, as that would just be sloppy. He looked up all kinds of stuff on an airbrushing forum about that paint, that people were thinning it out at a 10 ratio, that it still will want to clog your airbrush tip. So I found the section in Vid's restoration guide about using Creatix. It pretty much said you don't thin the paint, a cheap airbrush will work just fine, and the paint only needs one coat. Again, this wasn't jiving with our current predicament where the paint just kept clogging the tip. Finally my friend threw in the towel, cranked up the psi, and told me that at that pressure it was pretty much just going to force clogs out the tip, so spray off where you want it first, then onto the area. Precision was no longer an option!

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I had to spray A LOT of paint before you could no longer see the faded yellow coming from under. Then I hit it with a heat gun to dry. Two areas required a second coat. Next came the red lasers (which I hadn't peeled up the masking on yet, for obvious reasons). The trick here was how close it came to the white we just painted. Because there was massive overspray, we did a whole new bit of masking using butcher paper over the Frisket of the already sprayed areas. I didn't even bother trying to mix the red exactly match what was on the table since it was about 3 different shades throughout! It seemed almost an exact match out the bottle, and since I was doing them completely, what the hell. I did a really heavy coat, dried it, then shot a second coat. The far left laser still had some residual image barely visible, but I could live with it. I didn't want to have too heavy a build up of paint that might cause me problems when clear coating.

End result?

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Wow does the white pop! And the lasers are once again straight, uniformly the same color, and not peeling up from the playfield. Here's a little detail of the white flame, pinstriping, and numbers...

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The numbers aren't perfect, but then neither were they originally. From a players perspective I think they look just fine. It's only once you lean into them that you see the imperfections. Curious to see if the clear coat highlights that more, the same, or less. Speaking of, that's the next step now. Gonna shoot a much thinner layer than my first efforts, seal all this in. Then it will be back to my friend's house to do the numbers and lettering on all the inserts. Not gonna do decals, but use stencils he'll cut with his laser CNC machine. At the same time as that, I'll touch up some of the black near the top of the shooter lane. Debating about shooting all black between the lasers at the top of the planet, probably will. Even if I don't add stars there, it'd look better than the mess it is now.

So that's my goal, shoot clear by the end of the weekend, then deal with the insert stencils next week, followed by hopefully the last of clear coating. Then it will be on to the fun of putting the wiring harness back on. Yikes, I'm not looking forward to that!

Just a quick update. Sprayed my next layer of clear, a 'locking coat'. From what I gathered, that's enough clear to cover everything but not heavy at all. So I did that, made sure to overlap and leave no dry patches, but also didn't linger like the first time. The result?

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I've got orange peel. Not sure how much of an issue this is yet, waiting for a response from Vid. In the meantime I'll be sanding with my 600 grit in preparation for the next layer of painting.

I also need to start getting the feelers out there for drop target assemblies. I have no idea where I'm gonna get them from, so if anybody can help me out on that front, be greatly appreciated. From what I've read, Disco Fever, Hot Tip, and Phoenix are all machines that can be used as donors for the 3 bank drops. I'm wondering what other Bally machines had them.

Oh, and for the sake of showing progress, though it doesn't show much, here's the full playfield after this last clear:

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I haven't touched the table since last update. I was waiting on my waterslide decal paper to show up from Amazon, and while waiting had another mental monkey wrench thrown into the mix.

Digging around on my computer, I found a file I had started for Firepower almost 4 years ago. In that file I found a series of playfield 'scans' that I had stitched together in Photoshop. I remember it not quite stitching together perfect, especially the upper half, but that I had spend a lot of time getting the planet to look really good. As I'm looking at it, got to thinking that since I'm already going to be making decals for the inserts, how 'bout making a decal sheet of the center of the planet where all my wear is? The decal paper is clear, so the base color of the planet, white, won't print and that just leaves all the crazy hash marks. The tricky part will be mixing up the Creatix paint I have into the now yellowed white of the planet.

Unfortunately my paint mixing skills are non existent.

So here's the question, do I go ahead and try to repair this with paint and decals? If I don't get the color 'just' right, will it be too distracting? I guess there's no harm in trying, as the paint can be removed since it's going on top of the clear I've already sprayed. I'm not in the mood to add yet more steps to this process, but then now is the time.

Guess I'll have to see if the mood strikes me this week.

Didn't wanna let this thread whither on the vine again.

Back in July I started working on a TV show that sucks up every last bit of my time, so anything pinball related I knew was going to be put on the back burner until the show was over. Last week I got injured on the set, badly damaging my knee and severing a tendon. So now I'm relegated to sitting on the couch all day, having to keep the knee immobile. I'm not able to work, but I'm also not able to work on my table.

Once I gain some mobility back, I'll have no excuse not to work on the playfield again, so fingers crossed I'm only a few weeks out from starting back up. Bad news is, show will be over too. Anyways, that's the heads up for what's (not) going on.