Since I really enjoy watching all of your uploads, I would like to contribute with my own attempt to do a playfield restoration.
I have never done a playfield restoration before, so it took me a ton of time learning all the things, such as the airbrush for example.

I am very pleased with the result so far. It needs the last finish, but I think you get the idea of what I have been doing.

Next time I will do some things differently, but still, given this is my first go at it, I am all smiles...Next time I will have more knowledge and it will be even better.

Click the link below to see some pictures:

http://spille-maskiner.dk/forum/download/file.php?id=11002

I am actually in the process of clear coating, and it turns out it is easier than i thought. I am using a 2K clear and it is actually very easy to work with.
I have "build" a spray booth in my workshop by sewing four shower curtains together and placing them in a rail in the ceiling making a closed area. It works great. I get next to nothing of dust in the clear coat. And if there is any, it will disappear during the wet sanding and final polish.
It is much easier than I thought, and it is a job I will do the next time again for sure.
I have heard that the clear coat has to cure for 6 weeks before putting the game back together. Iit has been almost 6 weeks so I am looking forward to doing the last wet sanding and final polish soon.

I have no idea about the amount of hours I have put in to this project. But I think I can do my next playfield restore in a quarter of the time, maybe less.
I have used a lot of time finding out which techniques to use, what products and the tools, such as airbrush, frisket and so on, but all that knowledge I have gained, I can take to the next restore and that for sure will save me a lot of time.
My next playfield restore will be my Addams Family og the Stargate, but that will not be any time soon. First I have to put the playfield back together and that might be time consuming as well.

Yes for sure. I will be happy to.
I took all the components of the playfield as you can see on the pictures. Then i took of the Mylar with the freeze spray technique. I found out it is a very gentle way of doing it. Just use a lot of it and do not pull, only a very very gentle pull, and it comes of by it self when it freezes.
All the glue from the Mylar I soaked a little, with a cloth, in benzine, (not sure if that is the right word, maybe it is naptha in english? i am not sure) and I could rub it of very easily with my fingers leaving nothing behind.

Then I cleaned the playfield the best that i could.
There was some places where the wear was very bad, and almost like a hole down in the wood. And also there was a lot os tiny "holes" or marks in the playfield, for example in the area of the Rudy with the umbrella, you can see it in the "before" picture. I do not know how they occur, but I had to do fill it, so I used a two component paste called Chemical Wood (freely translated from danish, but I think it is the name in english as well) and sanded the playfield level afterwards.

Then I was ready to do all the base colors, i mean the big areas, or at least I thought.
It turned out that the original paint, was very fragile, especially where it had not been covered in Mylar.
I used frisket to cover up when painting, but even though the tack is very low on frisket, it still managed to pull of some of the old paint, so I decided to do the things I could without the need to cover up, for example inserts, black lines etc. before giving the playfield a 2K clear coat.
After giving the playfield a nice thick layer of clear I had no problems with paint lifting off. Also I found that it was easier to correct errors on the clear coat, so the next time I will also give my playfield a clear coat before restoring.
So I did all the big areas of colors before turning my attention to the detailed areas.
After I stripped down the playfield I had made a scan of the worn out areas as I knew I was going to use water slide to restore them.
I used PhotoShop (or GIMP) to redraw the graphics. Some of it was totally gone so I had to find pictures online to recreate the graphics.
The great thing about PhotoShop or Gimp, is that it is possible to draw layers on top of the scan, using the scan as a back ground, and then only print the painted layers on to the waterslide.
As you can see on the picture below I started with the scan "1". Then I made the black areas lines "2", and then i filled in the colours "3". In picture "4" you can see what the graphics look like without the black line and only the colours. As you can se they are very blurry, and that is the good thing about painting in layers. Is is only the black colour that takes a lot of time, because I do not have to be very precise with the other colours because the black will cover and make the borders so it appears nice at the end. In picture "5" I have removed the background and it is ready to print on the water slide.

Hele klovnen.png

The water slide is very easy to work with. It is a bit expensive, but as always quality and price normally go hand in hand, and that was also the case here. I found some cheap water slide paper from China, but the colors did not seem to attach very well when going through the laser printer, and also they did not bond very well to the playfield.
I got some water slide paper from the UK, from craftyComputerPaper and that was a totally different story. Very nice product easy to work with, great colours and did stick very well to the playfield. And even though the water slide is only 2 MY thick it is very durable and do not crack or rip at all. I was very surprised by that.
Also it is virtually invisible once dried. It is like it liquifies and floats onto the playfield. It is just a great product. It, as all things, has some limitations, but overall a great help in projects like this.
I forgot to mention that i put a layer of clear on before and after applying the water slides, makling a clear coat, waterslide, clear coat sandwich. I do not knowif that is necessary, but my thought was that I might avoid problems of materials not working together and ripping the waterslide. (I do not know if that made any sence to you?)

After applying the waterslides there was just some touch ups to do and then a layer of 2K clear coat, some wet sanding and another layer of 2K clear coat, and know after 6 weeks to harden I will do a final wet sanding and then the final polish to get it nice and shiny. I can not wait to see the final result.

And then I have to put the whole playfield back together, which I also think will be quite a project.

That was more or less how I did it. I might have forgotten something, but I think it is all there.

By the way. I have all the waterslides I made in PhotoShop and I will be happy to share them with any of you if you need to do a funhouse restoration some day. There is no need to do the same work twice.
These are the graphics I have made for this project. I can not guarantee that they are a 100% accurate since some of it are made but looking at pictures, since not all was there on my scans, but I think they will do in most cases.
Just sent me an PM and I can send them in to any of you in better resolution or as PhotoShop files.

And any other questions or comments, just let me know. I will be happy to reply or help.

It takes some time to master, but it is far from impossible, as this example clearly shows. But you will need a spray gun or an airbrush. Forget about brush painting. It does not look very good.

And it does not matter if the paint is high or low gloss. Before the clear coat the playfield looks dull and I thought it had been a waste of time, but once the clear coat came on, all the colors really came to life. It is truly amazing the difference it does.

And a little tip. Always put on a layer of white before painting the colors, especially the bright once like yellow and orange. Otherwise they will never cover, I had some trouble before I figured that out.
And it is also a good idea to put white under the waters slides. If they are black and in dark colors it is not that important, but in the white and yellow ones it is the best. I can show you an example of that.

But just go for it. It took me at lot of time, but now I know how, so I can do the next one much faster. Just cant wait...

I also got a question why everything appears twice on the sheet with the water slides.

That is actually two sheets that I put together to show them all in one page. If out cut down the middle you have to two pages I printed. I put more on the page, because I wanted to use as much of the paper as possible, and I made two of every one since I thought that they would break or damage, but I had no such problems. Even though the water slide is very thin it is very durable and hard to break. So next time I will only print one of each, but that is just another of the things I have learned.

The only problem I had with the water slides was during testing. Once they are positioned you have to rub out the water underneath. If I rub to hard it is possible to damage the printed colors on the water slide. Is does not break, but there will be like small cracks in the "paint" of the water slide, but once you know this the is no trouble at all.

Of cause there is some things you learn along the way. One of those was the following.

The water slide paper comes in two different types. A transparent, and a white one. I used only the white type for this project, and even though the paper is white, it is still a little bit transparent. Given the water slide is a very thin foil the black color can be seen through the paper, where there is not printed on the water slide.

I have tried to illustrate what I mean in the picture. When I made the "Enter Here Finger" I thought that the white paper would cover the black, but as you can see in the picture, the black appears as a light grey shadow. I bet non of you have noticed that, and it is not anything you see if you do not know it, but still, next time I will paint white below the waterslides in the white areas of the water slide.

I had the same problem on the Kansas sign. In the white part of the sign, the letters appeared to have shadows, because the letters from the playfield could be seen through the water slide as a light grey shadow. So I had to peel the water slide of and paint the area white, before laying the water slide down, with at perfect result.

WaterSlide.png