Picked up this beauty today. I would have passed but I had this pin as a kid and I've been looking for another for a long time. Anyway, I'm hoping to repaint and by a playfield protector to get this back in shape. If anyone has any hi-res scans of the playfield that they would be willing to send, I would be very appreciative. Will be my first repaint job. I don't think I can screw it up any more than it already is. . .

Also, if anyone is selling a playfield in better shape than this one, I would be interested.

Thanks

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My BoP restoration hit a speed bump so I'm back to this Target Alpha. Day 1 before and after cleaning with alcohol & magic eraser.

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Every time I look at this thing it reminds me of this other retouched artwork.

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1st attempt at wood tone airbrush touch ups, before and afters

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Yellow and pink paint done. Probably should have just painted over the black lettering and painted back later with stencils or waterslide. Oh well, live and learn.

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Red done. Purple next.

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Thanks! It's definitely more work than I expected, but it feels great to get a color done. I'm dreading the black lines but I have a feeling those will really make it look good when they're done.

I'm using a silhouette cameo and gerbermask for most of it. Frisket for stuff that I forgot to plot on the silhouette or that I think is going to be easy to freehand cut. Airbrush for everything.

I think the cameo will be critical for the black lines. I can't think of any other way to get consistent line thicknesses, etc., but that will mean a ton of prep work in illustrator before I can even think about painting.

with the paint pen, don't you still have to mask everything off?

I bought the cameo on sale just for this project. It's by far the best and most useful tool I've purchased for pinball related stuff. I don't think I would have attempted this without the cameo.

@Flipperfanatic: A Silhouette Cameo is a vinyl cutter (cuts other things too). There's a thread on pinside about using it on pinball restorations. You upload drawings to the Cameo, and the Cameo cuts the drawings into the vinyl so you have an adhesive paint mask. Cricut is another brand.

Murphdom Personally, I've scanned my playfield with an old scanner that I have, but the scanned pictures were still hard to align perfectly. The frame of the scanner is angled so the scanner doesn't lay perfectly flat on the playfield. The good thing about the vinyl is that it's stretchy. If my scans are a little off, I can stretch them enough to align perfectly.

FlipperFanatic Frisket, Gerbermask, and Oramask are all types of low adhesive vinyl that are used for airbrush paint masking. Gerbermask works best for cutting small details with the Cameo (basically, all of the lettering on my playfield). My understanding is that the oramask and frisket are harder to cut with the Cameo, but they're good for freehand cutting - they're see through so you can place a sheet on the playfield and then cut the outline of what you want to paint.

I had never airbrushed or heard of a cameo until I decided to rehab this target alpha and started seeking advice on pinside. Airbrushing is really easy, and the cameo makes the process almost dummy proof if you have good scans of the playfield.

RE: the bare wood at the bottom, not only did the previous owner paint over the lacquer, the wood had some gouges in it. I think I would have been able to use the airbrush to get a good thin wood color if it was just stained, but I had to fill the gouges with wood putty so now the bare wood section will probably have to be painted more of a brown/beige color. I'll figure that out when I get to that point. If your wood is in good condition, I would consider picking up a can of varnish and brushing just on that section. It won't be as good as a pro restoration but I bet it would be perfect for home use.

It's all a little hard to describe in words if you're not familiar with the cameo. I'll upload some pics when I print my next set of masks for the purple color.

This weekend's efforts had some set backs. I decided to mask the playfield by hand with an xacto knife using oracal (the blue stuff). The only part I used the silhouette for in this picture is the white mask top right- cutting those small lightning bolt shapes by hand would have been annoying.

I sprayed all of the purple areas, but doing so highlighted some additional playfield defects that I hadn't noticed before. They really showed up under a clean coat of paint. Also, when I removed the oracal, it proved too strong and pulled up some of the yellow and pink paint. It even pulled up some wood fibers in spots. Guess the oracal can't be trusted with an uncleared playfield. Too bad - it's see through and really easy to cut and work with.

I wood puttied and sanded many spots and now I'll repaint the colors.

Still dreading the black lines. I'll have to try to find a very fine black paint marker. I'm also looking into using a pinstriping paint brush.

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Ha! I am enjoying this attempt but I think I'll need a year off after I finish this one

@silverstreak - I just ordered one of those montana markers. That's probably my best option.

Tried the black montana marker today after repainting yellow. Worked pretty well for straight lines but it's real tough to draw curved lines that are consistent width and not wavy. Also, the marker tip snagged on every defect in the wood, spattering paint. This seems like it will be my best option for black but it's going to be very hard to make it look professional and not hand drawn.

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Lots of progress today.Repainted red and purple and played around with the Montana paint marker on some keylines. I think I need to spray a lockdown clear coat to protect the existing paint before I do white and the rest of the black but I'm dreading it a bit - I would hate to ruin any of the work I've done.

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I did not spray a lockdown coat to start. The playfield was so messed up it didn't matter if I pulled any paint off when I started. Frisket and Gerbermask 1 have the perfect amount of low tackiness so I'd probably be safe without the lockdown, but I have enough work into this now that I don't want to screw anything up.

I'm going to try Diamond Finish by KBS for my clear. I've seen a few posts on it. It's brushable. I know I'd get better results with a 2PAC clear but I don't want to pay someone to do that, and I don't want to buy all of the safety equip to do it myself. This was a free machine that will be strictly home use so I have no worries about the clear holding up. My only concern is that it reacts with something on the playfield and screws up the work I've already done.

Still need a fresh air respirator, full body suit, face shield- way too much risk and expense to me by the time you buy all the safety equip.

@Silverstreak - 3M supplied air masks (required for spraying 2PAC) are usually in the hundreds of $$ - certainly not $27, but it's not my concern if people want to risk their health over a playfield. Call me crazy but there's enough info out there to scare me so I'm going the KBS Diamond Finish route. As BorgDog says - he and others have tried KBS with good results, and being able to brush the stuff onto my playfield is something I'm comfortable with.

BorgDog did you spray a lockdown coat with KBS and then brush over, or did you brush all coats with KBS?

More progress this weekend. A very light spray clear coat worked well (no bubbling or issues). Followed up with some black airbrushing. A few more black touchups, then white and I'll be ready to start the final clear coat process. Black createx has been the easiest to spray by far. Would love to get this back together and working by Thanksgiving so I can turn my attention back to my BoP refurb.

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I think I'm finally ready to clear the playfield. It's not perfect but it's a huge improvement from where it started.

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Takeaways so far -

I've never done most of the things I did on the machine - this is totally possible for a noob like me.

Createx paint is as good as Vid claims in his playfield guide, although you have to thin some colors (e.g. white) with water to get them to spray well. I had zero problems spraying white over black. This is the first time I've ever airbrushed anything. I did it with a cheap airbrush and a home depot shop compressor and everything worked perfectly. I now want to airbrush everything

Heat setting the paint with a hair dryer is awesome. However, even a day later, some colors (eg red) will smear if you wipe them with a damp cloth. Clearing over is the only way to stop the smearing.

Everything in the silhouette cameo thread at pinside is spot on - that is an awesome tool for playfield restoration and using gerbermask (per the thread instructions) is the only way to go for detail work like text. You need a scanner to get accurate pictures to trace. If you have the scanner & silhouette, you're golden.

Original frisket is great when you're too lazy to trace your images for the silhouette or you have a simple shape to cut. I tried a knock off Frisket and it was terrible.

I could have done waterslides for the text, but my test shows that airbrushing works pretty well if the silhouette is cutting the stencils. It's not perfect, but I think I could get it there with more time, patience, and experience.

Airbrushing over everything as I did minimizes the amount of sanding lead paint that I had to deal with.

Where wood was damaged, I filled with wood putty & painted over. Even on bare wood areas, you can get decent results with a few light coats of different shades of beige. Again - not perfect but a guest wouldn't probably wouldn't notice in a HUO situation with lights, etc.

Montana paint markers (mentioned above) work very well (.07mm fine tip). I'm hoping they don't bleed when I clear over. They also sell empty montana paint markers. I filled one with the pink createx I mixed and that worked well for minor touch ups when I screwed up a spot airbrushing or accidentally scratched a spot.

Painted on my first coat of KBS Diamond Finish clear today. It did NOT go well. I followed the instructions perfectly. Outside, not too hot, low humidity, used a foam brush, did not thin. I think this stuff is way too thick out of the can. I will likely have to wet sand before my next coat and hope I can get things to level out (and hope I don't cut into any of the paint).

The good news is, outside, under natural light, at an angle where the drags and runs don't show, the clear makes thge paint look great

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Finally calling this playfield done. It came out better than I had hoped. After I brought it inside, I realized I probably could have sanded longer with each grit sandpaper. I can see tiny swirls. That said, I'm happy with my first repaint & clear coat.

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Switched to spraymax. I never got kbs to work. Spraymax was extremely forgiving for a noob like me.